Gastão Crawford de Freitas Ferraz was a Portuguese

spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ''e ...

working for the

Abwehr The (German language, German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', though the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context) ) was the German military intelligence , military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ...

. He was one of two

radio operator A radio operator (also, formerly, a wireless operator in British and Commonwealth English) is a person who is responsible for the operations of a radio system and the technicalities in broadcasting. The profession of radio operator has become l ...

s on board the ''Gil Eanes'', the codfish fleet support ship on the

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for se ...

. Ferraz almost succeeded in alerting the German military leadership to the imminent "

Operation Torch Operation Torch (8–16 November 1942) was an Allies of World War II, Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa whil ...

" in 1942. The British HMS ''Duke of York'' stopped the ''Gil Eanes'' on 1 November 1942 and a

commando A commando is a combatant, or operative of an elite light infantry or special operations force, specially trained for carrying out raids and operating in small teams behind enemy lines. Originally, "a commando" was a type of combat unit, as oppo ...

arrested Freitas. During interrogation Freitas was shown a photo of the Abwehr resident in

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

, Kuno Weltzien. Freitas became nervous at this moment. The British had picked up radio traffic indicating naval espionage, possibly compromising secrecy on "Operation Torch". On 15 October

MI5 MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Gov ...

asked for permission to arrest the neutral Portuguese fishermen, since they knew of two radio contacts between the fishing fleet and the Germans. Freitas was interned in "

Camp 020 Camp 020 at Latchmere House in Ham, Surrey (now in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames), was a British interrogation centre for captured German agents during the Second World War. It was run by Lieutenant Colonel Robin "Tin Eye" Stephen ...

" in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

with 500 other spies, some of whom then radioed false messages to the Germans as

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...

s. The ''Gil Eanes'' had been sailing close to

General Patton George Smith Patton Jr. (11 November 1885 – 21 December 1945) was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh Army in the Mediterranean Theater of World War II, then the Third Army in France and Germany after the Alli ...

's armada, en route to the invasion in

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

("Torch").

External links

* * Abwehr personnel of World War II Freitas Ferraz, Gastao de Portuguese people imprisoned abroad {{spy-stub Collaborators with Nazi Germany People interned during World War II Foreign nationals imprisoned in the United Kingdom