Two more suspected spies admit they are Russian citizens

Two more of the 11 suspected spies charged in the United States have admitted they are Russian citizens, prosecutors say.

Accused Russian spies Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills admitted they are Russians and that their names are fraudulent identities, U.S. prosecutors said Friday. Zottoli is Mikhail Kutzik and Mills is Natalia Pereverzeva, prosecutors said. Mills said her parents and siblings live in Russia, prosecutors said.

The pair were arrested in Arlington, Va., where they have been living as a married couple with two young children. Prosecutors say the couple had $100,000 in cash and phony passports and other identity documents stashed in safe deposit boxes and that Mills asked a family friend who has been caring for the couple's two children since their arrest to take them to Russia to Mills' sister and parents.

Zottoli and Mills, along with a third defendant, Mikhail Semenko, remained jailed after waiving their right Friday to a detention hearing during brief appearances in federal court. Semenko, who was in the United States on a work visa, is not alleged to have used a false identity. But prosecutors said the FBI has searched his home and a second apartment that he recently leased and found computer equipment "of the type capable of being used for . . . clandestine communications."

The hearing, initially scheduled for Thursday, was postponed after the defense was presented with new evidence. Prosecutors said the three, among 11 people charged in New York, Virginia and Massachusetts, are unregistered agents of Russia's intelligence service, the SVR. Prosecutors claim the spy ring tried to infiltrate U.S. policy-making circles and that the defendants would flee if released.

Christopher Metsos, 54, a purported Canadian who jumped bail in Cyprus earlier this week to avoid extradition on charges he was part of a Russian espionage ring, has probably left the island, the Cypriot justice minister said.

Metsos was arrested June 29 at Cyprus' main airport, where he was trying to board a flight to Budapest. A court on the eastern Mediterranean island released him on bail the same day and he disappeared the day after. The FBI said Metsos was an agent of the Russian espionage agency and traveled to the United States to pay other spies.

In Britain, meanwhile, the former husband of one of those accused in the United States, Anna Chapman, went public Friday, telling British media his ex-wife had told him her father, Vasily Kushchenko, was a "high-ranking" officer in the Russian security forces. The Daily Telegraph reported an MI5 officer interviewed Alex Chapman at his home in Bournemouth, Dorset, on Wednesday as part of the Security Service's investigation into the background of Anna Chapman, 28, accused of spying in the United States.

Alex Chapman married the then Anna Kushchenko in Moscow in 2002, five months after they met in a London nightclub. They divorced in 2006 but have remained in touch. Chapman told The Daily Telegraph: "Anna told me her father had been high up in the ranks of the KGB. She said he had been an agent in 'old Russia.' "