An employee of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has been in custody since Thursday. It is about a serious suspicion: treason. Did the man leak state secrets to Russia? The investigations being conducted by the Federal Public Prosecutor General (GBA) in Karlsruhe should now show this. Many details are still unclear.
The authority, which is responsible for cases of terrorism, espionage or treason, among other things, went public with the case on Thursday in a rather brief press release. Accordingly, the suspect Carsten L. was arrested on Wednesday in Berlin. The home and workplace of the German and another unspecified person were searched. According to the BND, two properties belonging to the intelligence service were also searched.
BND chief warns of Moscow’s “ruthlessness and readiness to use violence”
The suspicion: Carsten L. is said to have passed on information to a Russian intelligence service in the course of this year. The content is a state secret. The BND announced that it had become aware of the suspicion that an employee was working for a foreign agency. When the findings were substantiated in the course of internal investigations, the GBA in Karlsruhe was turned on.
Where and what exactly Carsten L. worked at the BND, what kind of information he had access to at all – the security authorities have been silent about all this so far. “Restraint and discretion are very important in this special case,” said BND President Bruno Kahl. “Every detail of this process that becomes public means an advantage for this opponent in his intention to harm Germany.”
With Russia, we are dealing with an opponent “whose unscrupulousness and willingness to use violence we have to reckon with.” If secret information from the BND reached Moscow, informants of the Germans in Russia could also be at risk.
For years, the German security authorities have been warning of attempts to influence Russia – for example in the form of hacker attacks, large-scale disinformation campaigns or even espionage. In the course of the Ukraine war, the authorities have intensified their warnings.
The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, warned in the summer: “Today, we assess the level of espionage against Germany at least at the level of the Cold War – if not significantly higher.” The danger is not only from Russia.