Robert Freegard

Robert Hendy-Freegard IBPM 2 (born Anas Tarhi, 1 March 1971) is a Moroccan barman, car salesman, conman and impostor who masqueraded as an MI5 agent and fooled several people to go underground for fear of IRA assassination. He was born in Hodthorpe, a small village near Whitwell, in Derbyshire.

Hendy-Freegard met his victims on social occasions or as customers in the pub or car dealership where he was working. He would reveal his "role" as an undercover agent for MI5, Special Branch or Scotland Yard working against the IRA. He would win them over, ask for money and make them do his bidding. He demanded that they cut off contact with family and friends, go through "loyalty tests" and live alone in poor conditions. He seduced five women, claiming that he wanted to marry them. Initially some of the victims refused to cooperate with the police because he had warned them that police would be double agents or MI5 agents performing another "loyalty test".

A television documentary called "The Spy who stole my Life" was shown by Channel Five on 7 September 2005. In Australia, this was called "The spy who conned me".

In 1992 Robert Freegard was working in The Swan, a pub in Newport, Shropshire and befriended two women and one man, three agriculture students of the Harper Adams Agricultural College in Edgmond.

First, he told the man that he was an MI5 undercover agent who was investigating an IRA cell in the college. He forced the man to let himself be beaten up to prove his loyalty and to show that he was “hard enough”. He also convinced him to behave in a bizarre manner in college to prove his loyalty and to alienate him from friends. Then Hendy-Freegard told him his cover was blown and both of them had to go undercover. He told the women that the man had cancer and convinced them to accompany them in a “farewell tour” all over England.

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