Serial killer who tried to sell a scoop to Boris

SLIPPERY: Charles Sobhraj played by Tahar Rahim in BBC series The Serpent. Left, Boris Johnson in his Spectator days and Sobhraj at his 2004 murder trial in Kathmandu

- Graeme Culliford

ONE is a cold-hearted serial killer whose terrifying murder spree is about to be recounted in a TV drama. The other is our Eton-educated Prime Minister who hails from an aristocratic family of English intellectuals.

So it seems incredible that Boris Johnson and slippery psychopath Charles Sobhraj’s worlds would ever collide.

Sobhraj was responsible for the slaughter of a dozen naive Westerners who he lured to their deaths with false promises. His killing spree is being dramatized this week on BBC One.

But another strand of his life story that won’t be explored is when he tried to sell a story to Boris in 2003 via an intermediary when the now Prime Minister was a journalist.

Sobhraj claimed he had evidence that a Middle East broker was snapping up “red mercury,” supposedly a key ingredient in nuclear weapons.

He wanted a go-between, respected writer Farrukh Dhondy, to help him sell the scoop to Boris, who was then the editor of Right-wing weekly The Spectator.

It came at the same time as then PM Tony Blair and US President George Bush were trying to justify their costly 2003 war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.