There was widespread shock and bafflement in Harrow, north-west London, after news broke about alleged spies in their neighbourhood.
Kamran Hussain is a barber a few doors down from where a Bulgarian couple suspected of spying for Russia were arrested in February under the Official Secrets Act after their flat was searched for hours.
“One of my customers lives just where it happened. When he woke up there were three or four police vans and they were there until about three in the afternoon when I saw them,” Hussain said.
“Of course it scares me you don’t know what’s around the corner. It is a bit freaky.”
Hussain said that for weeks after the arrest in February, a police van was parked in the Lidl car park opposite the flat where Biser Dzhambazov, 41, and Katrin Ivanova, 31, were believed to have been arrested.
“I’ve been here 13 years so I pretty much know people around here,” he said. “I am shocked … the area is so quiet.”
Ali, who was having his hair cut at the barber’s, joked: “I don’t get it… What are they going to tell the Russians – that there are three items for 10 quid in Iceland?”
Pete, who runs a newsagent, also remembers the presence of the police van. “It was there for weeks. Every day it was there,” he said.
Simòn Corcine, who runs Gino’s on the High Road, was also struggling to come to terms with the news. “I don’t understand it. There’s nothing here. If I was a spy I’d have been in central London living the high life, rather than living on the outskirts in Harrow Weald.”
Corcine, who is of Italian descent, said: “It’s so multicultural here they would really blend in. As a Bulgarian you wouldn’t stick out at all. You’ve got Albanian people here, Turkish people and Romanians.”
The Metropolitan police said three defendants were arrested on 8 February and charged with an offence under the Identity Documents Act. Orlin Roussev, 45, of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, is understood to have been charged alongside Dzhambazov and Ivanova.
Two other people were detained at the same time – a 31-year-old man living at an address in west London, and a 29-year-old woman from north London, the Met said.
All five were released on police bail and are due to return to court in September while a trial has been set for January at the Old Bailey. They have yet to enter pleas to the charges.
