Redhead held in US for spying is no Mata Hari, says her mother

The mother of alleged US spy Anna Chapman has told how her daughter is "no Mata Hari" and is just an average young Russian woman.

In reference to the most notorious female spy in history, Irina Kushchenko insisted her daughter is not involved in espionage and has always been "an independent and honest person".

The 50-year-old told the Russian news website lifenews.ru that she is now considering a legal action against newspapers that published an array of the 28-year-old's Facebook pictures that were intended for private use only.

Chapman is charged with conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, which carries a potential penalty of five years in prison.She is among 10 people held by the FBI accused of being part of a "sleeper" cell embedded in towns and cities across the US on the orders of the Kremlin.

Last night it emerged that Russia and the United States were considering a spy swap to send home the suspected Russian agents in exchange for 10 prisoners held in Russian jails who have spied for the West.

A US official said Washington might allow the suspected spies to plead guilty and then return to Russia in exchange for the release of certain prisoners. Nuclear expert Igor Sutyagin - jailed for 15 years in Russia for spying for the CIA - is said to be one of the agents involved in the deal, which could see him sent to Britain.

It has been alleged that Chapman may have married a young Briton so that she could obtain a British passport.

An email sent by her to a former boyfriend in Russia raises new questions over her four-year marriage to former public school pupil Alex Chapman.

In it she allegedly boasts: "We lived together for the first year, then after we got married, we moved to London.

"Then I dumped him, got the passport and continued living in London on my own, without him." MI5 is looking into whether the daughter of a senior KGB agent deliberately targeted her husband to obtain the passport.