Germany Arrests Military Consultant on Suspicion of Spying for Iran

The Federal Prosecutor's Office of Germany announced that a language and cultural consultant working for the country's military has been arrested on suspicion of espionage for the Iranian intelligence service. According to the prosecutor's statement, the suspect is 50 years old and was arrested on Tuesday, January 15, in western Germany. The detained individual, identified as 'Abdulhamid S.', is of Afghan-German descent. The Federal Prosecutor's Office of Germany states that the suspect was a 'language expert and cultural advisor in the German armed forces' and is believed to have provided information to an Iranian intelligence service. According to Spiegel, it is suspected that the consultant had been working for the Iranian security service for years. The report adds that during his service in the German army, he had access to highly sensitive information, including details about the deployment of German soldiers to Afghanistan. The German army typically sends local translators along with its patrols on missions in Afghanistan. German and European Union intelligence officials have recently expressed concern over the increase in Iranian espionage activities, including cyberattacks. The announcement of this news coincides with Iran being involved in another case in Germany, where its diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, was arrested. Mr. Assadi was detained on July 1 this year in connection with a joint investigation in Germany, Belgium, and France regarding a plot to 'bomb' a meeting of the Mujahedin-e Khalq in Paris, in the state of Bavaria, Germany. Iran has denied the involvement of its diplomat in this plot and has requested Mr. Assadi's extradition, but Berlin not only rejected this request but also handed him over to Belgium for trial. The European Union has imposed sanctions on Iran, pointing fingers at the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and accusing it of attempting to assassinate Tehran's opponents in Denmark and the Netherlands. Previous cases of espionage by a foreign intelligence service in Germany have caused shock and anger among the German public. In 2016, Markus Reichel, a former German intelligence officer, was convicted for dual espionage for the CIA and the Russian secret service. He was accused of delivering 'a number of internal documents and information' to the CIA, including documents about the details of Germany's counter-espionage strategies. Reichel also delivered three series of classified documents to the Russians. Germany also sentenced a couple to twenty years in prison in 2011 for spying for the Russian secret service. The couple, identified only by the pseudonyms Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, had worked as KGB spies during the Soviet Union and later its successor, the SVR, in West Germany since 1988. The couple focused on obtaining military and political secrets of NATO and the European Union, mainly concentrating on NATO and EU relations with Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries.