Bat Khurts

Bat Khurts is the head of the Executive Office of the Mongolian National Security Council and the former head of Mongolia's Central Spy Agency.

Arrest

In September 2010, Khurts traveled to London. Upon landing, he was arrested and put in Wandsworth Prison because of a European Arrest Warrant issued by the German authorities. Consequently, the Mongolian government accused the UK of luring Khurts to London to be arrested.

Khurts was imprisoned for allegedly arranging the kidnapping of Enkhbat Damiran, a Mongolian national who emigrated to France, and sending him back to Mongolia where he was then tortured. It was alleged that around 15 May 2003, Damiran, who was seeking asylum in France at the time, was kidnapped by officers of the General Intelligence Agency of Mongolia outside a restaurant in the French port of La Havre, smuggled across the border to Brussels, and then to the Mongolian embassy in Berlin. He was briefly held at the embassy before he was drugged and taken in a wheelchair onto a Mongolian MIAT flight to Ulaanbaatar on 18 May. His arrival in Ulaanbaatar was not registered by the border police and he was taken to a secret location outside the capital. He was tortured, unsuccessfully, to confess to the brutal murder of the well-known politician Zorig Sanjaasürengiin, a former Minister of Infrastructure and a potential future prime minister. On 24 May, he was registered as a GIA informant and his entry into Mongolia was subsequently registered by the border police as 25 May. During his torture, it was alleged that Damiran was, among other things, forced to sit on a stool for hours, beaten on the liver with a pistol, and subjected to a mock execution.