Germany Summons US Ambassador After Spy Arrest

Local Editor

German authorities have summoned the US ambassador in Berlin after a man was arrested on suspicion of spying, the foreign ministry said on Friday.

German media said the man arrested this week is a 31-year-old employee of the federal intelligence service, known as the BND.

The man was believed to have passed secret documents to a US contact in exchange for money, Der Spiegel news magazine said.

Meanwhile, one unnamed politician said the suspect had offered his services to the US voluntarily.

Germany's foreign ministry said the American envoy "was asked to help in the swift clarification" of the case.

The committee co-chair, Social Democrat MP Christian Flisek, said if the suspicion of a targeted attack on a German constitutional body was confirmed "that would set the level of trust back to zero and result in political consequences," the Wall Street Journal reported.

Officials confirmed the arrest but released no other details.

A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had been informed of the arrest, as had the members of the nine-strong parliamentary committee investigating the activities of foreign intelligence agencies in Germany.
"The matter is serious, it is clear," spokesman Steffen Seibert told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.

US-German ties were strained after accusations last year that the US National Security Agency [NSA] bugged Merkel's phone as part of a huge surveillance program.

The scale of the agency's global spy program was revealed in documents leaked by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

Sources: News Agencies, Edited by website team