Germany: Ex-spy chief arrested for espionage | Hacker News Reader

Germany: Ex-spy chief arrested for espionage

dw.com

53 pointsTomte18 comments

Die Zeit has to say: "Ermittlungsarbeiten im Block-Prozess hatten den Fall ins Rollen gebracht."[1] = "Investigatory work during the [Christina] Block case had triggered this."

Now who's Christina Block?

"Die 53 Jahre alte Hamburger Unternehmerin Christina Block ist angeklagt, nach einem langen Sorgerechtsstreit eine israelische Sicherheitsfirma damit beauftragt zu haben, ihren damals 10-jährigen Sohn und die damals 13 Jahre alte Tochter vom Wohnort des Vaters Stephan Hensel in Dänemark nach Deutschland zu entführen."[2]

"The 53 year old entrepreneur from Hamburg is indicted for, after a long fight over custody, having hired an Israeli security company to abduct her 10-year old son and 13-year old daughter, to bring them to Germany from their father's residence in Denmark."

…

So, that's exactly one very likely guess which [if any] foreign country was involved here. (Hint: it's not Denmark.)

[Ed.: NB: there's no guarantee any foreign country is involved. AIUI misappropriating state secrets is espionage even if you just shove them up your attic.]

¹ https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-10/august-hanni...

² https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/hamburg/block-prozess-in-hamb...

> there's no guarantee any foreign country is involved

Article says "...the 80-year-old faces charges including espionage, disclosure of state secrets, attempted treason and working as a secret service agent." I think the last two probably indicate more than keeping stuff marked secret in your attic.

That case keeps on giving. It's the weirdest case of entitled people and at every turn there is something new.

If you turned that into a script, no one would take it because everything in it is insane.

I always liked and thought DW was one of the largest publishers in Germany but learned from a German friend that it was not a major public media organization and many don't know about it there.

It's the thing aimed at overseas; the German news here in Australia on SBS are also DW. Like you can't really get France 24 inside France, or NHK World inside of Japan, or CNN International within the US without some extra hoops

It's state media.

It's like Voice of America and Russia Today in that it's aimed mostly at foreigners.

> The prosecutor's office did not say which foreign intelligence service was involved.

Lovely. I'm guessing it's an ally.

But also: “Whoever allies themselves with the enemies of our liberal democracy will be found out“. So … Russia?

An „ally“

allies spy on each other all the time. statecraft is weird like that.

The spy agency that repeatesly failed to uncover jihadist plots and relied on foreign agencies to get anything done.

Looking at timespan, 1998-2005. Of course under Gerhard Schröder, who is by all accounts a traitor to his own country, openly conspiring with enemy power (russia).

Schröder is getting elected in various russian companies as member of boards still to this day (read last one like 2-3 days ago). Question is, why is this tolerated and there is no international warrant for his arrest. If French can arrest their former PM (heck, italians tried the same), Germans should also accept their missteps and do the necessary correction of their course.

I could go on in very similar vein with merkel, but she clearly still has a small army of uncritical followers who are completely oblivious to all the damage she has done to entire EU even here.

Is it illegal to sit on the board of a foreign company?

I can see why it should be, but neither Schröder nor Russia are unique in this kind of conflict of interest.

Illegal? Probably no, but treason certainly is. But since he is an extremely visible politician and former chancellor, ties should be investigated thoroughly, and they are not even hidden. He is openly pro-russian even 4 years into brutal war which russia repeatedly declared on all western Europe, including Germany (as in 'we will raise your cities in nuclear holocaust' to quote them).

Nobody actually pro-democratic or sane is getting such generous 'donations', these don't come for free, in russia this is not private matter but fully state controlled and orchestrated.

If you can't connect 2 and 2 form above and publicly available info and see no problem there, I guess its pretty obvious where you stand on topic of russia - vs - western democratic world war currently happening. An attempt to make this 'just another war this is happening everywhere all the time' ain't true if you live in Europe, this is our existential threat and most folks here realize that very well.

So what I heard is that a disgruntled ex-colleague raised the concern that his ex-boss contracted with a friendly intelligence service to analyze the current Russia situation. Which led to these documents being provided by the then boss to his ex-boss for his report.

No idea if this was illegal at all. Certainly not espionage.

Of course it is both, are you stupid?

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