Two suspected Russian spies alleged to have been operating in Germany for more than 20 years have been charged with espionage, federal prosecutors said Thursday, in the first case of its kind since German unification. The man and the woman, who German media said are married, were arrested last October after police raided their home in the western town of Ballingen, reportedly catching the woman red-handed listening to coded messages.
The federal prosecutor's office identified the two suspects only by their "aliases", Andreas and Heidrun A. It said they had established residency in Germany in 1988 using fake Austrian documentation, setting up a "middle-class existence to cover up their activity for the secret services". It was a year before the Berlin Wall fell and the Russian security services (SVR) were still the Soviet Union's KGB.
"The accused had the task of gathering information about the political and military strategy of the EU and Nato," the prosecutor's office said. They are accused of running another agent from October 2008 to August 2011 who spirited official documents about EU and Nato affairs from the Dutch foreign ministry to them.
"The accused, alias Andreas A., then delivered them to his headquarters via so-called dead letterboxes," it said. "Until their arrest on October 18, 2011 they also provided political-social information about general and security-relevant political aspects of relations between Germany, the EU and Nato to Russia." During that time they allegedly remained in constant contact with the SVR, via satellite transmissions and "an Internet video portal". In exchange, they received nearly 100,000 ($130,000) euros in payments per year for their services as spies, the prosecutor's office said.