Has secret BND information leaked from the Defense Committee to the press and the public? The Berlin public prosecutor’s office is examining this suspicion, and Bundestag President Bärbel Bas has confirmed the relevant procedures.
The Berlin public prosecutor’s office is investigating possible secret betrayal in the Defense Committee of the Bundestag. “There are procedures in which the Bundestag administration has approached the public prosecutor. We are checking these,” said a spokeswoman for the authorities on Friday. She did not provide information on the number of procedures or their content. There is a suspicion that information classified as secret could have been leaked from the defense committee.
The news portal “The Pioneer” reported that Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) had granted so-called criminal prosecution authorization in four cases relating to the Defense Committee and in three others relating to other specialist committees of Parliament.
The background is a briefing by the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) on the situation in the Ukraine war. In several media reports, content was then made public that was a topic in particular in the non-public or secret meeting of the Defense Committee. Specifically, it was about intercepted radio messages from the Russian military, which prove atrocities committed against the Ukrainian civilian population not far from the capital Kyiv. FOCUS had already reported in April that Strack-Zimmermann had filed a criminal complaint for betrayal of secrets.
It is assumed that information classified as secret could have escaped from the session. More than 60 politicians and government officials attended the meeting in early April. “New and old MPs must understand that betrayal of secrets is not a trivial offense and the penalties associated with betrayal of secrets are not paper tigers, but can lead to real consequences,” she told the news portal.
