{"id":303255,"date":"2026-10-07T12:35:35","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T08:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/?p=303255"},"modified":"2026-10-07T13:38:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T09:38:39","slug":"der-spiegel%d6%89-former-german-intelligence-chief-spied-for-baku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/news\/303255\/","title":{"rendered":"Der Spiegel\u0589 Former German intelligence chief spied for Baku"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body><p>Former Head of Germany&rsquo;s Federal Intelligence Service August Hanning, who was detained yesterday on suspicion of espionage and attempted high treason, was in contact with an employee of Azerbaijan&rsquo;s special services, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/?from=404&amp;ref=https%3A%2F%2Fabcmedia.am%2F\">Der Spiegel<\/a> reports, citing anonymous sources.<\/p>\n<p>According to sources, Hanning (who served from 1998 to 2005) prepared an intelligence briefing for Azerbaijani intelligence.<\/p>\n<p>The Azerbaijan Press and Broadcasting Council denied the allegations, stating: &ldquo;This is disinformation and part of an ongoing, intense campaign to slander Azerbaijan.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/news\/303058\/\">According<\/a> to the German Federal Prosecutor&rsquo;s Office, an informant who held high-ranking positions in the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has been charged with transferring about 2,000 documents (many of them classified) to Hanning between the 2010s and 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors claim that Hanning used this information for personal profit. He intended to &ldquo;resell&rdquo; the data as part of his consulting activities. Specifically, according to the prosecution, in at least one instance Hanning used confidential information to compile an analytical report for a foreign intelligence officer.<\/p>\n<p>In Germany, high treason is punishable by up to life imprisonment.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Head of Germany&rsquo;s Federal Intelligence Service August Hanning, who was detained yesterday on suspicion of espionage and attempted high treason, was in contact with an employee of Azerbaijan&rsquo;s special services, Der Spiegel reports, citing anonymous sources. According to sources, Hanning (who served from 1998 to 2005) prepared an intelligence briefing for Azerbaijani intelligence. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":303239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,35,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-region"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303256,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303255\/revisions\/303256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}