Published: Less than 30 min ago
Updated: Less than 10 min ago
“Disappear in Sweden”
“Can you be prosecuted before interrogation”
“Stay away from the law”.
Payam Kia began panicking on the internet when Säpo was the spy brothers on the trail.
Now he and older brother Peyman Kia are indicted on suspicion of having sold defense secrets to a Russian contact.
The brothers Peyman Kia, 42, and Payam Kia, 35, are suspected of aggravated espionage. After several years of suspicion, the prosecutors have gathered enough evidence to bring charges.
They are suspected of having committed the crimes for many years. At the end of September last year, the older brother Peyman Kia, who had been employed by both the Armed Forces, the Security Police and the Swedish Food Agency, was arrested.
PLUS: The interrogator after 146 questions to Peyman: “Are you swimming?”
A couple of weeks later, in October 2021, a search was carried out at brother Payam Kia’s residence. He was arrested just over a month later on suspicion of involvement.
In between, the police can see that Payam Kia borrowed a computer and made 28 searches on the internet.
“Spy”, “disappear in Sweden”, “volka can be in prison with class 3”, “that he did not intend to spy”, “statute of limitation crime”, are some of the searches.
He has also researched how to permanently delete files from a mobile phone and whether messages in chat apps are deleted if you delete the entire app.
Wrote to Danish hotels about packages
During the preliminary investigation, the police have made numerous seizures of hard drives, mobile phones, USB sticks and found digital traces, including texts that Payam Kia is said to have written.
“There are several parts in Payam’s texts that could be related to contact with a foreign power and to the planning of a handover of something that appears to provide a greater financial compensation,” the IT forensic investigation protocol states.
The little brother is also suspected of destroying a hard drive that was thrown into a trash can at a bus stop.
“The fact that the hard drive from the computer that most likely could have provided additional answers regarding Payam’s possible involvement has been destroyed has contributed to making it more difficult to answer parts of the preliminary investigation’s questions,” the protocol states.
When asked about it in questioning, Payam Kia says that he was afraid that the police would confiscate it as it contains private things and that it “would be a violation of privacy” if the police went through it.
According to the investigation protocol, emails were also found that were sent to seven hotels in Denmark where the sender asks if the hotels can receive a package and store it until the guest arrives a few days later.
“This can be put in relation to a text on Payam’s USB stick where the possibility of using a mailbox, something with a backlog or a hotel is raised,” the protocol says.
The police have also confiscated a USB stick during the investigation in which Denmark is mentioned.
“These notes discuss, among other things, whether it is possible to exchange money without ID in Denmark or another EU country. Dollars are mentioned in several places among the notes,” the minutes say.
In another text file, it is reasoned again about exchanging Danish and Swedish kronor as well as dollars and that “you said that this is absolutely the last time” and that a meeting “with rasski” went wrong.
“I was right about how the meeting with Raska could go wrong and that’s exactly what happened,” reads a note.
Denies GRU connection
In interrogation, as summarized in the preliminary investigation, Payam Kia is asked about his notes and he says that he “winds” and remembers things that way.
PLUS: The interrogator after 146 questions to Peyman: “Are you swimming?”
The interrogator says that the investigators believe that the notes relate to topics and details that he is supposed to talk to his brother about, and he replies that it could be that way, but insists that those are his own thoughts.
The police also ask about notes about money, including “800,000 a month ore” in a note. He has mentioned GRU again and wrote “Becomes like the GRU thing and is frustrating and not optimal”.
He replies that it’s not what the police think and that it might be an abbreviation for something. The police are “completely out and about” if the suspicions against him are based on this and it is a complete waste of tax money, he says. You cannot read his notes letter by letter, because “then there will be chaos”. He just signed off, he says.
The security police and prosecutors claim in the indictment that the two brothers sold material to Russia and Vladimir Putin’s military spy organization GRU.
According to Payam Kia, one cannot interpret his texts as they contain “hundreds of typos”. He says that he understands that it can be interpreted, but that it is not true.
Both brothers deny any wrongdoing.