Love affair to staged arrest: how a Romanian from England was jailed in Russia as a spy

By Mark Trevelyan LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters) Springtime in a park. Grey sky. A young man in a blue knitted hat and Adidas backpack walks down a path. Two burly security agents spring from a van and pin him to the pavement. What is your name? asks a voice in English as a gloved hand holds the man s face towards the camera. David Adrian Kercso, he swiftly responds. Where is he from? Romania. Romania. The video, released by Russia s FSB security service and published by state media, purports to show the arrest of Kercso, now 23, a Romanian citizen who grew up ​in England and was sentenced earlier this year to 15 years for spying for Ukraine. Reuters has not been able to verify all of the evidence in Kercso s case. But what is clear is ‌that the arrest video is not what it purports to be: Reuters analysis of the video and of court records of his detention shows that at the time it was made he had already been in Russian custody for months. It was filmed in a park inside Russia, in th