Russian spy suspect missing, Cyprus police say

[gateley]

ARNACA, Cyprus — One of the 11 suspects accused by the United States of spying for Russia has gone missing after being released on bail in Cyprus, Cypriot police said on Wednesday.
Christopher Robert Metsos, who is 54 or 55, was expected to sign in at a police station in the coastal town of Larnaca on Wednesday but failed to show up, said Michalis Katsounotos, a police spokesman.

A warrant was being prepared for Metsos's arrest for violating the terms of his bail order, Katsounotos added.

Metsos was the only one of the 11 suspects arrested outside the United States. He was freed on bail in Cyprus on Tuesday after being held while attempting to leave the country for Budapest from Larnaca airport, police said.

"The individual should have appeared between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. to police. He did not appear by 8:00. Some additional time was given and until now he has not shown up," Katsounotos said.
Metsos's lawyer, Michalis Papathanasiou, told Reuters he had had no contact with the suspect on Wednesday.

Metsos had purported to be a Canadian citizen. The federal complaint says he traveled to the United States to pay members of the spy ring using clandestine — and sometimes bizarre — methods.

Metsos was surreptitiously handed the money by a Russian official as the two swapped nearly identical orange bags while passing each other on a staircase at a commuter train station in New York, Metsos said.

After allegedly giving some of the money to one of the defendants, Metsos drove north and stopped his car near upstate Wurtsboro, N.Y. Using data from a global-positioning system that had been secretly installed in his car, agents went to the site and found a partially buried brown beer bottle. They dug down about five inches and discovered a package wrapped in duct tape, which they photographed and then reburied.

Two years later, video surveillance caught two unnamed secret agents digging up the package.

This report includes information from The Associated Press.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38021957/ns/world_news-europe/