A court in Düsseldorf sentenced a former Bundeswehr officer to three and a half years in prison on charges of espionage for Russia. Spiegel reports this.
54-year-old Thomas H. was found guilty of undercover activity and violating official secrets. The indictment states that he, on his own initiative, passed on official information to the Russian intelligence services.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper wrote that in May 2023, the officer saved files with “security-critical information” on his laptop, took six photographs of German air force training documents and took the package with documents to the Russian consulate in Bonn.
The man's lawyer said that in four days his client destroyed everything he had accumulated over the years in the profession. He called his actions «four days of betrayal.» According to prosecutors, Thomas H. “almost obsessively” tried to pass on classified information to Russian intelligence services.
The military man himself told the court that he turned to Russian representatives out of fear of a possible nuclear escalation of the war in Ukraine. “This is the most stupid thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Thomas H. Chronic overwork, he said, caused him to develop depression that impaired his “rational thinking.”
The officer was detained in August 2023. In the Bundeswehr he worked in the department of equipment and information technology.