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Justice staff at the start of the process: Is Ilnur N. a spy?
Photo: Lennart Preiss / dpa
At the beginning of a espionage trial against a Russian scientist before the Munich Higher Regional Court, the accused Ilnur N. denied knowingly working for the Russian foreign intelligence service SWR.
"I'm not an agent," said N. "Nobody asked me if I wanted to work for a secret organization." If someone asked him if he wanted to work for a secret service, "I would immediately say no."
His life has changed completely since his arrest.
"The last eight months were just a horror for me," he said: "My life, my career, everything is gone."
The 30-year-old is accused of acting as a secret service agent – because of cooperation with the "secret service of a foreign power," as the Federal Public Prosecutor's indictment puts it.
The federal prosecutor assumes that the Russian secret service wanted to get information about the European launch vehicle "Ariane" from him.
Hand over USB sticks
According to the indictment, the man gave an employee of the Russian Consulate General in Munich several scientific articles that were publicly available on the Internet for a total of 2,500 euros.
In part, he used a university account to pull the articles onto USB sticks.
The meetings to hand over the sticks took place in various burger and steak restaurants in Augsburg.
The 30-year-old does not deny that.
However, he did not know that the man to whom, according to the federal prosecutor's office, he is said to have given information, was an employee of the secret service.
And he never spoke to him about his own work at the university.
"I never considered that he might be an employee of an agent organization," said N.
He was arrested in June 2021.
Almost at the same time, an employee of the Russian Consulate General in Munich was expelled and declared “persona non grata” – an undesirable person.
SPIEGEL already reported at the end of January that, according to people familiar with the process, the man was only supposed to have been accredited as a diplomat - in fact he was a full-time employee of the Russian foreign intelligence service SWR.
He was exposed as part of an investigation by the Federal Public Prosecutor General against Ilnur N.
Have a beer with the diplomat
He cannot imagine that the Russian secret service would be interested in information that is publicly available anyway.
Articles about the "Ariane" rocket can be found on "Wikipedia," according to N. He met the diplomat by chance on a trip with friends.
Afterwards they had arranged to meet for a beer, during which the man from the consulate reported on an acquaintance who wanted to invest in aviation projects.
The defendant's lawyer, Jens Palupski, said in a brief statement that the information provided by his client was not secret: "He is only here because he has published scientific articles and reports that were available to everyone, copied onto sticks.« The accusation of the prosecution therefore seems »strangely outdated in times of cybercrime and in times of the Internet«.
Because: "One can confidently assume that the Russian intelligence service also has an Internet connection."
ptz/ulz/AFP/dpa