A bogus KGB defector, who tricked the Home Office and BBC's Newsnight into believing he was a genuine agent, has been exposed after he was caught using a clumsily forged driving licence.
Jobless Ikrom Yakubov, 30, successfully applied for asylum in the UK until 2014 after arriving on a six-month visa and was portrayed on a Newsnight feature as the first Uzbekistan KGB agent to defect.
However, his elaborate story of obtaining the Portuguese licence legitimately during a top-secret mission to the country was dismissed by a Kingston Crown Court jury, who convicted him.
Police checks with MI5 and MI6 via the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism unit failed to add credence to Yakubov's story and he has been served with deportation papers.
Yesterday he was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment, suspended for a year, and ordered to perform 160 hours community service for possessing a false identity document, with intent, in Old Kent Road, Southwark on November 8, last year.
Yakubov, of St. Paul's Road, Tottenham - who claimed his grandfather founded the Uzbekistan KGB - told Newsnight in August 2009 that the Russian TSB trained him to kill with his bare hands and he had witnessed torture and false confessions.
He said his life was in danger after criticising President Islam Karimov - resulting in his own torture which involved his fingers being broken and beatings, left him with intestinal injuries.
Yakubov arrived in the UK on September 1, 2008 and claimed asylum three days later, telling the Home Office he spent a decade in Uzbekistan's national security agency the SNB (formerly the KGB).
"I was an intelligence officer and worked directly under the president of Uzbekistan," he told the jury. "In 2005 there was an uprising against the dictatorship and the head of state ordered the killing of more than one thousand eight hundred people.
"After the massacre EU countries, including the UK suspended relations with Uzbekistan and the President ordered intelligence officers to countries, including Portugal, to see if it was sustainable to bring Uzbekistan gold and money to them.
"I attended driving lessons in Lisbon in 2005 and I received this driving licence. I believe this is a genuine driving licence."
However, when police pulled L-driver Yakubov over they immediately saw the hologram was incorrect, the typeface was not straight and the licence was purportedly issued before he even took the test.
Despite this Yakubov stuck to his story telling the officers: "I was a former KGB officer and the Uzbekistan government paid for this licence."
He pleaded with the jury: "This is a matter of life and death for me. I want to live in this country under a clear name.
"I came to this country as a defector and was accepted as an ex-intelligence officer whose life was at risk and I was granted political asylum," he told the court.
"I have been sentenced to twenty-five years for treason in Uzbekistan and I want to give thanks to this nation for giving me a chance and for the medical treatment I received after I was tortured."
Yakubov also convinced the Home Office he was a member of the Uzbekistan president's National Security Council, the press and information agency and the institute for strategic and regional studies.
The court made no deportation order, but the Home Office will take the conviction into consideration when deciding whether to extend Yakubov's leave to remain.
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