Walter Biot, a traitor of “extreme danger” who has sold secret documents to profit, or a man in financial difficulty with one sick daughter? The first are the words with which the order of the investigating judge of Rome describes the frigate captain Walter Biot, arrested on Tuesday evening in flagrantees immediately after delivering confidential military documents to an employee of the Russian embassy in exchange for five thousand euros. Neither sporadic nor isolated activity, writes the judge of Biot, who availed himself of the right not to answer.
Walter Biot and his sick daughter
For his lawyer, Roberto De Vita, Biot he would have made a mistake “in a moment of profound crisis, personal, family and economic, including due to serious health conditions of the daughter “ and, in any case, the officer assured, the passing of papers to the Russians “did not in any way jeopardize the security of the state”.
The interrogation scheduled for the validation hearing was therefore soon closed, with the officer merely telling the judge that he was “confused and disoriented, but ready to clarify” his position.
The defender asked for house arrest, but the magistrate – arguing the danger and the “criminal depth” – said no: the man therefore remains detained in Regina Coeli.
Russian officials returned to Moscow
Meanwhile, the two Russian officials who had engaged the Italian, Alexey Nemudrov and Dmitri Ostroukhov, they boarded a flight to Moscow this morning.
They had received the order of expulsion, saving himself from arrest thanks to diplomatic immunity.
The documents found
In the memory card seized by the Carabinieri del Ros who caught the exchange between Biot and the Russian officer red-handed, they were found at the moment 181 photos of classified paper documents.
The officer photographed them from the monitors of the Military Policy and Planning office of the Defense Staff, where he worked.
Also present 9 documents classified as ‘highly confidential’ (the secrecy ranking has four levels: ‘confidential’, the lowest, ‘highly confidential’, ‘secret’ and ‘top secret’, the highest) and 47 of type ‘Nato Secret’.
The investigating judge underlines that for his role Biot managed documents covered by secrecy preordained for the security of the State, dealing, among other things, with the projection of the Italian defense assets in foreign operational theaters and also with NATO, EU and UN operations.
Walter Biot: the theses of accusation and defense
The ordinance highlights what are defined as “accurate methods of acting” of the officer, who allegedly took, according to the accusation, a series of precautions not to arouse suspicion, such as, for example, “the insertion of the SD card within the medicine leaflet as well as the fact that no appointments or contacts with the Russian agent emerge from the telephones in his possession ”.
The way of acting, according to the investigating judge, “shows in a handheld manner the extreme danger of the subject given the professionalism demonstrated, which can be inferred from the several tools used (4 smartphones) and the measures adopted”.
The defender of Biot, for his part, said he was sure that the affair “will be reduced”, since the documents sold, as the Italian official assured, “did not in any way jeopardize the security of the state” .
Should any of the charges against the officer be confirmed, political and military espionage, the penalty provided for in article 257 of the Criminal Code is not less than 15 years, while it can shoot life imprisonment if “the fact compromised the preparation or the war efficiency of the State, or rather the military operations”.
In addition to the Rome prosecutor’s office, the military prosecutor’s office is also proceeding and soon there will be a meeting between the respective prosecutors to assess the competence.