Spy suspect 'embarrassed' as her ex-husband tells of life together

The image of the flame-haired 28-year-old was splashed across the world's media following her arrest for allegedly spying on the United States.

Her private life was dissected at length after Alex Chapman and his family decided to speak to the media about their time with her.

Chapman and 10 others are accused by the United States of working as secret agents for Russia's intelligence service, the SVR.

Lawyer Robert Baum, showed the Russian diplomat's daughter Press cuttings following her arrest. He said: "She was embarrassed by some of the photos that were obviously taken from her Facebook pages.

"The truth is she is probably no different than your typical single 28-year-old woman in New York City. She runs a successful business, goes out at night. She dates men, enjoys a social life."

Mr Baum said she was "very concerned" that she may get deported and added that she wanted to stay in the US.

Chapman's former father-in-law insisted he did not recognise the Press images of her and suggested she may have been set up. The 56-year-old independent mortgage adviser said: "She's simply not some Mata Hari, she can't be... she's just an ordinary girl."

He could not believe his son was targeted just for his British passport, insisting: "I'm convinced it wasn't a honey trap."

But his 30-year-old son, from Bournemouth, Dorset, spoke of his suspicions she was being "conditioned" by shadowy contacts during their marriage. In an interview he revealed more personal details about their life as husband and wife.

Mr Chapman also spoke of his meeting with an MI5 agent who quizzed him intently about Chapman's father and a Zimbabwean businessman.

He said: "I had just put the phone down on my father, who had told me the news about Anna, when I received a call.

"A woman said 'This is Clare from the security services. You are probably aware by now that your ex-wife is being accused of espionage'."

He said he met the agent in a conference room at the Milford Hall Hotel in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

She wanted a "detailed report about Anna and her father," he added.

"She gave me the impression that she believed Anna had got caught up in something but didn't really understand how serious it was. She said she would have been lured by the glamour and glitz and that she thought she was doing her country a service."

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said it was looking into Chapman's connections to Britain but refused to comment on whether it was investigating the possibility that she spied against the UK.

Chapman, who was arrested in New York on Monday, worked in London between 2003 and 2007.

During her marriage to Alex the couple rented a flat in Stoke Newington, north London.

Mr Chapman met the Russian in September 2001 when she was an economics student at Moscow University.

Another of the alleged Russian agents arrested by US officials in Monday's raids was Tracey Lee Ann Foley, who is accused of travelling on a fake British passport.

The FCO said it was investigating the matter but remained confident that the British passport was "one of the most secure documents of its kind".

Officials in Dublin are looking into claims that a false Irish passport was to be used by a member of the alleged spy ring.

Members of the alleged ring were said to have sent information from America back to the Kremlin.

US court papers lift the lid on techniques including short-range wireless communications between laptop computers and high-speed burst radio transmission.