Russian Sleeper Agent Freed in Poland

Nov. 17, 2011

A convicted Russian sleeper agent was released from a Polish prison Thursday after serving less than one year of a three-year sentence for spying, RIA-Novosti reported.

"Nobody wanted to keep him in a Polish prison anymore" because his detention required extra security measures, the agency said, citing an unnamed court official.

Tadeusz Juchniewicz, a 41-year-old Russian national who had lived in Poland for 10 years, was secretly arrested in 2009.

Polish authorities said Juchniewicz, whose cover was as a businessman, had special encoding devices in his house, which he used to send information about the Polish military back to Moscow.

He pleaded not guilty but was convicted in a closed-door trial in December 2010.

His capture started a wave of arrests of Russian sleeper agents around the world — most notably in the United States, where Anna Chapman and nine other "illegals" were shipped back to Russia in 2010 in a Cold War-style prisoner swap.

Two other supposed deep-cover spies were arrested in Germany last month.

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