After seven years in hiding overseas, Sweden's boldest double-agent has turned himself in, saying he wanted to see his family.
Stig Bergling, 57, gave more than 14,700 documents to the Soviet Union in the 1970s, authorities said. His espionage was so extensive that Sweden was forced to revamp much of its defense system after he was caught in 1979. He escaped from custody in 1987.Among other things, Bergling gave the Soviets details on the location of Swedish coastal defense installations and weapon sites.
"He had handed over Sweden's most classified documents from the military sector," according to the Swedish daily Expressen.
Authorities had been unable to nail down Bergling's whereabouts since his escape. Swedish media reported that officials learned recently that he wanted to return.
Bergling flew with his wife on a commercial airliner from Frankfurt late Tuesday to Stockholm's Arlanda airport, where they were met by police and arrested.
"It's very, very satisfying that he is now behind bars," Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt said today. "He will now continue to serve his sentence."
Bildt said it will be a long time before authorities learn where Bergling was and what he was doing.
The chief of Kronoberg prison, where Bergling was being held, said the double-agent claimed he returned because his wife found it too difficult being away from her family.
"Bergling didn't even know whether his mother was still alive," said the prison chief, Ingemar Vidh, according to the Swedish news agency TT.
Vidh was quoted as saying Bergling "feels relieved that this is over."
The scope of Bergling's activities reportedly was not detected until the late 1970s, after he left Sweden's SAPO intelligence agency and moved to Jordan.
With the help of Israel's Mossad, he was arrested in Tel Aviv in 1979 and returned to Stockholm, where he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He spent the first four years in solitary confinement.
In 1986, while in prison, Bergling married a longtime friend, Elisabeth Sandberg.
The following year, prison authorities allowed him to visit Sandberg at her home in a Stockholm suburb. With police watching the building entrance, the couple bolted through a back door.
The couple hopped a ferry to Finland. Police lost track of them outside Helsinki, finding only their discarded clothes in a car in a parking lot.
Swedish officials speculated that Soviet Embassy officials helped Bergling and his wife get into Russia or another country, Swedish media reported.
Bergling allegedly began spying for Moscow in 1973, passing documents he took while working as a counter-espionage officer for SAPO and the Swedish army. Bergling also served as an officer for a U.N. battalion in Lebanon and Cyprus.
A parliamentary inquiry blamed the National Prisons Board for Bergling's escape.
The flap forced the resignation of the justice minister, Sten Wickbom.