Russian spy has UK passport withdrawn

The 28-year-old, who was married to a British man and lived in London for several years, was expelled from the US last week in the biggest spy swap since the Cold War.

She and nine others was flown back to Moscow but her American lawyer said she would ultimately like to return to Britain.

But a Whitehall source said last night that Chapman has been handed a letter revoking her citizenship and her passport is no longer valid.

Officials had revealed that Home Secretary Theresa May was urgently considering the case last week. She has the power to deprive dual nationals of citizenship when "conducive to the public good".

Chapman was one of 10 Russian spies exchanged for four Western agents released by Moscow on the tarmac at Vienna airport..

They were expelled from the US after pleading guilty in a Manhattan court to conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign country.

An 11th defendant is a fugitive after he fled Cyprus following his release on bail and another Russian man arrested in the US is expected to be deported.

Following their arrests, the 10 sleeper agents are understood to have provided almost no information about what kind of spying they actually did for the K.G.B.'s successor, the SVR.

Chapman, who was running her own online business in New York and was a regular on the city's party scene, was watched on one occasion by investigators as she set up her laptop in a bookstore and connected with a wireless network set up by someone identified as "Russian Government Official No 1" who was outside the store, carrying a briefcase.

Another time, she made an electronic link with the same unnamed official when he was parked outside a coffee shop where she had her laptop.

At her arraignment hearing, she confirmed she had communicated with a Russian official using a wireless signal sent from her laptop. Asked by the judge whether she realised then that her actions were criminal, she said: "Yes I did, your honour."

Details emerged after their arrests of how the 10 led apparently ordinary lives in America - several were married with children and had well-kept suburban homes.

They were, however, said to have sent information back to Moscow, using invisible ink, false passports and code words, having been instructed to infiltrate "policy-making circles".

Chapman, the daughter of a Russian diplomat, was married to Briton Alex Chapman, 30, from Bournemouth in Dorset, from 2002 until 2006 and worked in London for about four years. The couple had met while she was studying economics at Moscow University.

Last week's spy swap was arranged after it became clear to FBI agents, who had been monitoring the Russians' activities, that at least two were making plans to leave the US.

The timing of the arrests was deliberated with US President Barack Obama on June 11.

Chapman triggered the FBI swoop when she made an anxious phone call to her father in Moscow saying she thought her cover was blown.

Her US lawyer Robert Baum has revealed she made the call after an FBI officer, posing as a Russian consular officer named "Roman", summoned her to a meeting in New York, gave her a fake passport and asked her to pass it on to another spy.

Unconvinced, however, she immediately went to buy a pay-as-you-go phone to call her father, an intelligence officer in Moscow, who told her to hand the passport to the police – which she did, at a police station, prompting her arrest.

At about the same time, US Attorney General Eric Holder said, one of the husbands of one of the couples was making arrangements to travel to France and then to Russia and it was thought the SVR would not have permitted him to return once Chapman's call was assessed and the FBI would lose him.

It is understood all the spies' young children have been "repatriated" to Russia to join their parents.