The future boss of British external intelligence was a grandfather … a Nazi spy. When she has just been named at the head of the Mi6, the tabloid The Daily Mail Published the information, adding that his paternal grandfather was also a deserter of the Russian army of Ukrainian origin.
Blaise Metreweli, 47, was appointed mid-June to become the first woman to direct the secret intelligence service. Few things have been disclosed by her past or personal life, when she has spent most of her career in the anonymity of intelligence services.
Nicknamed “the butcher” by commanders
According to a survey by Daily Mail Published on Friday, which went up the track of its origins through documents archived in the United Kingdom and Germany in particular, his grandfather was called Constantine Dobrowolski and was during the Second World War a zealous Nazi spy, operating in Ukraine. Engaged in the Russian army, he was sent to the front from which he joined the camp of Nazi Germany.
Nicknamed “the butcher” or “agent n ° 30” by Wehrmacht commanders, the army of the Third Reich, he notably contributed “personally” to “the extermination of the Jews”, as he himself affirmed in letters exchanged with his superiors, found by the newspaper.
His wife fled in the United Kingdom during the war with her two -month -old son – Blaise Metreweli’s future father – where she remarried in 1947, taking the name of her new husband David Metreweli.
Sought after
According to the BBC, Constantine Dobrowolski also appears on a list of people wanted by the KGB in the 1960s as foreign intelligence agents and “traitors to the motherland”.
Contacted, the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has the supervision on the MI6, said that the latter “has never known or met his paternal grandfather”.
“Blaise’s ancestry is marked by conflicts and divisions and, as is the case for many people of Eastern European origin, it is only partially known,” he added.
“It is precisely this complex heritage which contributed to its commitment to prevent conflicts and protect the British population from modern threats emanating from hostile states,” said the ministry.
