LONDON -- British intelligence cracked a Soviet spy network in Cyprus in which female agents tried to lure British soldiers into divulging secret information using 'Mata Hari' blackmail techniques, news reports said Friday.
'The British intelligence teams were surprised by the old-fashioned Mata Hari techniques being used by the Russians and their hired agents,' the Daily Mail newspaper said.
A Defense Ministry spokesman in London said 'an investigation is going on at the moment in Cyprus into an unauthorized disclosure of official information.' Asked if it involved Soviet agents, the spokesman said 'I don't know.'
The Daily Mail, in a front-page report by its defense correspondent in Limassol, Cyprus, said several young 'airmen have already been sent back to England after telling officers of spy approaches.'
The spokesman said only that 'an airman is assisting in the inquiry' but he would not release his name. 'There may be no charges filed,' he said.
The newspaper said a team of agents from MI5, Britain's counter-intelligence service, flew to Cyprus and cracked the sex and blackmail network.
The trap was set by women working as barmaids, or simply posing as clients at a disco or clubs popular with off-duty servicemen, the report said. Britain has military bases on the Mediterranean island, a former British colony.
'She asks the young man home, encourages him into a compromising situation then springs the trap with an angry 'husband' who suddenly appears threatening divorce proceedings and publicity,' the report said.
The Daily Mail said blackmail was also attempted after a hidden cameraman photographed the couple in bed.
'Yet another ploy is an apparently innocent invitation to dinner with a Cypriot family, at the end of which the British guest is pressed to accept a gift -- often whiskey,' the paper said.
'Always at the dinner table would be a man posing as a friendly uncle. This man would later contact the serviceman and threaten to blackmail him, saying he had accepted the gift knowing it had come from a Soviet agent in return for cooperation,' it said.
The paper said that in every case, the young men who reported the incidents were immediately sent back to Britain to be reassigned.
Britain's Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri supplied British troops who recently left Lebanon's peace-keeping force. The base is also used by U.S. planes monitoring Lebanon and the Iran-Iraq conflict, the newspaper said.
The legendary Mata Hari was a Dutch double agent who worked for both the Germans and the French in World War I. She was executed by the French.
