A Dusseldorf court has found a 54-year-old German army officer guilty of spying for Russia and has sentenced him to three-and-a-half years in prison, German broadcaster ZDF reported on Monday.
The man, who due to Germany’s strict privacy laws, was identified only as Thomas H., testified that he had been in a very poor psychological state when he decided to make contact with Russian consular officials, and had feared nuclear escalation in Ukraine.
H. said that he had attempted to contact the Russian Consulate on three separate occasions, in the hopes of gaining information about a potential Russian nuclear strike so that he could get his family to safety, but he said he had never received a reply.
The Bundeswehr Procurement Office, in Koblenz, Germany, 10 August 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE / RONALD WITTEK
The Prosecutor General’s Office claimed that the officer had contacted the Russian Consulate General in Bonn as well as the Russian Embassy in Berlin several times to “offer to work together”, before being arrested in August 2023.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, H. worked in the German army’s procurement office. As well as being responsible for equipping the Bundeswehr with materials and weapons, German publication Focus noted that the factory in Koblenz where H. worked was also responsible for the development and testing of military hardware.
According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily newspaper, the officer saved multiple files containing “security-critical information” to his laptop, including six photos of German air force training documents, which, German magazine Der Spiegel reported, he intended to pass on the consular officials to “give Russian military forces an advantage”.
