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British Embassy in Berlin: David S. was the porter at the entrance
Photo: Britta Pedersen / dpa
The Federal Republic delivers a suspected Russian spy to Great Britain.
According to SPIEGEL information, the Brandenburg Higher Regional Court approved the transfer of David S., a British citizen who worked as a local clerk at the UK Embassy in Berlin.
S. has been in custody in Germany for the past year.
The federal prosecutor accused him of "secret service agent activity".
He is said to have passed information obtained through his job at the gate of the British embassy to a Russian secret service.
This is said to have been mainly British material - but at least one delivery is said to have contained information about employees of the Foreign Office in Berlin.
According to SPIEGEL information, German and British security authorities found out about S. in a joint operation.
Among other things, they learned that S. must have received relevant amounts of cash from his Russian employers for his services: He did not withdraw any money from his checking account for long periods of time and did not pay for purchases with a card - but apparently all in cash.
S. had resisted being extradited to his home country until the end.
His lawyer had announced in December that S. made a conscious decision years ago to leave Great Britain.
He wants to face his procedure in Germany.
This will no longer happen.
S. is likely to be prosecuted in Great Britain under the "Official Secets Act".
It provides for much higher penalties than the corresponding German criminal offense of secret service agent activity.
In this country, S. could have expected a relatively small sentence.
String of lesser agents exposed
S. is one of a number of suspected Russian spies who have been busted in Germany over the past two years.
They have in common that, from the point of view of investigators and intelligence services, they are rather low-threshold, i.e. they did not pass on any significant information.
Nevertheless, they reveal the immense extent of Russian espionage in Germany.
For example, an employee of a maintenance company for electrical appliances was convicted in Berlin last year.
As part of his work, he is said to have obtained property plans from the Bundestag and sent them to a representative of the Russian military intelligence service GRU in the Russian embassy.
Furthermore, a research assistant from the University of Augsburg is said to have been on the road in the service of Moscow.
Attorney General Peter Frank had him arrested last summer.
His clients are said to have been particularly interested in information about the European rocket program Ariane.
Finally, last Friday, the federal prosecutor's office announced that they had accused German citizen Ralph G. of suspected secret service activity.
He had provided his Russian clients with public and non-public information, including about his work as a reservist in the German Armed Forces and American foreign and security policy.
It is frustrating for investigative and security authorities that they usually cannot get hold of the managers of the relevant Russian secret services: They are often accredited as diplomats in this country and therefore enjoy immunity.
In the case of David S., the Federal Republic expelled his senior officer from the country, who was disguised as a diplomat.
In the course of the Russian attack, there has been intensive discussion in the federal government and among the individual member states for weeks as to whether Russian spies disguised as diplomats should be expelled on a large scale.
After initial attempts at coordination at EU level, Poland and Slovakia have now done this bilaterally.
What speaks against the expulsion of diplomats
The federal government originally only wanted to participate in a common European solution.
An internal government review is said to have come to no conclusion.
Opponents of such expulsions of Russian spies and their leaders argue that Moscow's embassies in EU countries are usually larger than those of EU countries in Moscow.
If Moscow expels a diplomat from Europe for every identified spy, which is customary, the embassies of most EU countries will very quickly be reduced to a minimum of staff.
The federal government has also pointed out this problem several times in the past.
In the federal government, too, this argument is often used in the discussion about the expulsion of diplomats and spies in connection with cases such as the Tiergarten murder or the poisoning of the Russian opposition figure Alexej Navalny.
In the course of the poisoning attack on the Russian ex-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018, the United Kingdom had expelled all employees of the Russian intelligence services disguised as diplomats from the country.
Since then, it is said in London, the situation has been "manageable" despite Russian countermeasures.