German court sentences ex-Yugoslav spies to life for 1983 murder of dissident
August 4, 2016 Leave a comment
A German court has given life sentences to two senior intelligence officers in Cold-War-era Yugoslavia, who masterminded the murder of a Croat dissident in 1983. Josip Perković and Zdravko Mustać, both former senior officials in the Yugoslav State Security Service, known as UDBA, were extradited to Germany from Croatia in 2014. They were tried in a German court in the Bavarian capital Munich for organizing the assassination of Stjepan Đureković on July 28, 1983. Đureković’s killing was carried out by UDBA operatives in Wolfratshausen, Bavaria as part of an UDBA operation codenamed DUNAV. Đureković, who was of Croatian nationality, was director of Yugoslavia’s state-owned INA oil company until 1982, when he suddenly defected to West Germany. Upon his arrival in Germany, he was granted political asylum and began associating with Croatian nationalist émigré groups that were active in the country. It was the reason why he was killed by the government of Yugoslavia.
The court proceedings in Munich included dramatic testimony by another former UDBA operative, Vinko Sindicić, who named both Perković and Mustać as direct accomplices in Đureković’s murder. Sindicić told the court that Perković was acting on orders to kill the German-based dissident, which came directly from the office of UDBA Director Zdravko Mustać. He added that Perković helped organize the logistics of Đureković’s assassination, including the location in Munich where the killing actually took place. Sindicić told the court that a female UDBA operative living in Munich was also involved in organizing the operation, and that the weapons used to kill Đureković had been secretly transported to Germany through Jadroagent, an international shipping and freight company based in Yugoslavia.
On Wednesday, the court found both former UDBA officials guilty of complicity in the assassination of Đureković and convicted them for life. German media reported that the convicted men’s defense team plans to appeal the ruling by advancing the case to Germany’s Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, which is Germany’s highest ordinary-jurisdiction court. Perković and Mustać declined requests to make comments to the press at the end of the trial. It is believed that at least 22 Croat nationalists were murdered in West Germany by the Yugoslavian intelligence services during the Cold War.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 04 August 2016 | Permalink
A major parliamentary inquiry into the operations of Germany’s main intelligence agency has concluded that it spied on nearly 3,500 foreign targets in recent years, most of which belonged to allied countries. The inquiry was initiated by the German government in response to a number of recent public controversies involving the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, known as BND.
A former officer in the Cold-War-era Yugoslav intelligence service has begun testifying at a trial concerning the 1983 murder in Germany of a Yugoslav dissident by assassins sent by authorities in Belgrade. Stjepan Đureković, who was of Croatian nationality, defected from Yugoslavia to Germany in 1982, while he was director of Yugoslavia’s state-owned INA oil company. Upon his arrival in Germany, he was granted political asylum and began associating with Croatian nationalist émigré groups that were active in the country. He was killed on July 28, 1983, in Wolfratshausen, Bavaria. His killing was part of an operation codenamed DUNAV, which was conducted by the Yugoslav State Security Service, known by its Serbo-Croatian acronym, UDBA.
The senior executive body of the German government has approved draft legislation that reforms the country’s intelligence services, following revelations that Germany helped the United States spy on European states. The legislation is seen as a response by the German government to a number of recent public controversies involving the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, known as BND.
The computers of a nuclear power plant in southern Germany have been found to be infected with computer viruses that are designed to steal files and provide attackers with remote control of the system. The power plant, known as Gundremmingen, is located in Germany’s southern district of Günzburg, about 75 miles northwest of the city of Munich. The facility is owned and operated by RWE AG, Germany’s second-largest electricity producer, which is based in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia. The company provides energy to over 30 million customers throughout Europe.
The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has been removed from his post in a move described by observers as surprising. Gerhard Schindler, 63, had led Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, known as Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, since 2012. Founded 60 years ago with direct input from the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the BND is today responsible for collecting intelligence abroad in the service of German national interests. Headquartered in the southern German city of Pullach, near Munich, the BND is directly subordinate to the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
A notorious lieutenant colonel in the Waffen SS, who served in Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguard unit, worked as a hitman for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad after World War II, it has been revealed. Austrian-born Otto Skorzeny became known as the most ruthless special-forces commander in the Third Reich. Having joined the Austrian branch of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party at 19, at age 23 Skorzeny began serving in the Waffen SS, Nazi Germany’s conscript army that consisted largely of foreign-born fighters. In 1943, Hitler himself decorated Skorzeny with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, in recognition of his leadership in Operation EICHE, the rescue by German commandos of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who had been imprisoned at a ski resort in the Apennine Mountains following a coup against his government.
A court in Germany has sentenced a former officer of the country’s intelligence agency, who spied for the United States and Russia from 2008 to 2014. Regular readers of this website will recall the case of ‘Markus R.’, a clerk at the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, Germany’s external intelligence agency. The 32-year-old was 
Authorities in a northern German town have called on the Israeli embassy in Berlin to pay for the cost of extricating a car belonging to two Israeli spies, which was stuck in a mud pit in a restricted area. According to the Hamburg-based television station NDR, the 
German intelligence, possibly with the collaboration of the United States, monitored communications lines connecting Finland with at least five countries in the early 2000s, 
Police in Germany caught Anders Breivik with ammunition and weapon parts in 2009, two years before he killed nearly 80 people in Norway, but did not arrest him and failed to notify Norwegian police, according to a new documentary. Breivik is a jailed far-right terrorist, who in 2011 single-handedly perpetrated two terrorist attacks that killed 8 people in Norwegian capital Oslo and another 69 on the island of Utøya. During his trial, he said he killed his victims, most of whom were participants at a Norwegian Labor Party summer camp, in order to protest against “multi-culturalism” and “Islamization” in Norway. The attack, which included the use of a car bomb and semi-automatic weapons, is considered the deadliest terrorist incident in Norway’s history since World War II.
A report by Germany’s primary intelligence agency warns that internal power struggles and broader geopolitical changes are turning the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into a major source of regional instability. The 
The United States Central Intelligence Agency had direct and unfiltered access to telecommunications data exchanged between German citizens, according to a new document that has surfaced in the German press. The program, codenamed GLOTAIC, was a collaboration between the CIA and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, known as BND. According to German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which 
A German intelligence officer, who is accused of spying for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, has been 
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Turkey asks German spies for help in rounding up July coup plotters
August 22, 2016 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
According to German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (known by its Turkish initials, MİT) has secretly contacted its German counterpart, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND). The Turks’ request, said Spiegel, involves the provision of assistance to investigate and arrest supporters of the Gülen movement living in Germany, some of whom are German citizens. There are over three million people with Turkish citizenship, or of Turkish descent, currently living in Turkey. Citing “a dossier of classified documents”, Spiegel said that the MİT had asked the BND to investigate a list of 40 individuals for possible links to Gülen, and to extradite to Turkey another three whom Ankara claims have direct ties to the July coup. The documents also allegedly contain a request for MİT officials to pressure German lawmakers to be more critical of Gülen supporters in Germany. Requests for cooperation were also sent by MİT to nearly a dozen state governments in Germany, but all were declined, said Spiegel.
The Turkish government has arrested, fired or demoted tens of thousands of people since July, for alleged links to the Gülen movement. Some European officials, many of them German, have accused President Erdoğan of using the failed coup as an excuse to purge his opponents of all political persuasions in the country. On Sunday, the head of Germany’s Committee on Parliamentary Oversight, Clemens Binninger, said he would launch an investigation into the joint projects between German and Turkish intelligence agencies following the failed July coup. Another member of the Committee, Hans-Christian Ströbele, said he would personally set up a panel to probe any communication between German intelligence agencies and the MİT. By working closely with Turkish intelligence, German spy agencies were risking “becoming complicit in criminal activity”, said Ströbele.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 22 August 2016 | Permalink
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