Denmark arrests Russian woman in connection with covert Kremlin legal fund

June 12, 2024 by 4 Comments

PET DenmarkA RUSSIAN WOMAN IS under arrest in Denmark, reportedly in connection with a surreptitious legal fund that is allegedly connected to intelligence operations conducted by the Kremlin. The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) said on Tuesday that the Russian national had been detained south of the Danish capital Copenhagen on suspicion of “enabling a foreign intelligence service to operate in Denmark”.

Crucially, the PET press statement noted that the arrest relates to recent reports about a legal defense fund with covert links to the Kremlin, which was uncovered in the press. On June 3, the state-owned Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) published information from 40 leaked documents about an alleged sovereign wealth fund known as Fund for Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad (Pravfond).

According to the DR report, Pravfond was set up in secret by the Russian authorities in order to finance the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns in nearly 50 countries around the world. Pravfond also operates as a legal defense fund for Russian intelligence operatives who have been captured abroad while carrying out intelligence operations. For example, it contributed funds for the legal defense of notorious Russian weapons merchant Viktor Bout and Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who is currently being held in a German prison.

The PET said that the Russian woman would be released following questioning, adding that the investigation into the espionage case would continue. The agency did not name the woman. However, according to reports in the Danish media, she is “a central figure in the Russian community in Denmark”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 12 June 2024 | Permalink

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Alleged Islamic State informant sues Danish spy services over prison sentence

August 28, 2023 by 1 Comment

PET DenmarkA DANISH CITIZEN IS suing two Danish spy agencies, claiming that he was wrongly jailed for being a member of the Islamic State, when in fact he had been asked by his handlers to join the group as an undercover informant. The lawsuit has been brought in Copenhagen by Ahmed Samsam, a 34-year-old Danish citizen of Syrian origin. Samsam’s father, Jihad Samsam, fled to Denmark from Syria following the 1982 Hama massacre, when the Syrian military violently quelled an anti-government uprising by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ahmed Samsam grew up in Copenhagen with his six siblings. He was involved in numerous criminal activities, including robbery and drugs possession. In September 2012, he traveled to from Denmark to Turkey. From there he entered Syria, intending to join the civil war on the side of the anti-government rebels. Upon returning to Denmark in December of that year, Samsam was imprisoned for a prior criminal offense. It was during his time in prison that members of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) allegedly approached him, asking him to work as an undercover informant abroad. Samsam claims that he undertook several trips to Syria as an informant between 2013 and 2015. While he was there, he claims that he spied on the Islamic State on behalf of the PET and the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE), which also recruited him as a spy.

Samsam eventually returned to Denmark, but in 2017 fled to Spain, allegedly to escape harassment by a rival criminal gang in Copenhagen. In June of that year, he was arrested by Spanish police near the coastal city of Malaga in southern Spain. Samsam was charged with terrorism, after police discovered several photos of himself posing with Islamic State symbols and flags on his mobile telephone. He was eventually convicted to eight years in prison, which were later reduced to six. Since 2020, Samsam has been serving his prison sentence in Denmark.

But, in a lawsuit he brought against the Danish state, Samsam claims he had engaged with Islamic State fighters in Syria at the behest of the PET and the FE, and argues that he should not be jailed for terrorism offenses. However, the Danish intelligence agencies have rejected calls to confirm or deny that Samsam had been recruited by them as an informant. Attorney Peter Biering, who represents the defendants in the case, told the court last week that forcing the intelligence agencies to identify their informants would “harm [the agencies’] ability to […] protect [their sources] and prevent terrorism”. Samsam’s attorney, Erbil Kaya, argues that the Danish state is morally obligated to admit to his client’s role as an undercover informant, even if this is formally prevented by the law of the land.

The trial is expected to conclude on September 8. Several witnesses, including government officials and investigative reporters, have been scheduled to testify in court, almost certainly behind closed doors.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 28 August 2023 | Permalink

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Denmark arrests four intelligence officers for disclosing ‘highly classified’ information

December 13, 2021 by Leave a comment

DDIS DenmarkFOUR CURRENT AND FORMER employees of Denmark’s intelligence community were arrested last week, as part of what Danish authorities described as a “lengthy and ongoing” counterintelligence investigation. News of the arrests came on Thursday in a brief press statement posted online by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET). Known in Denmark as the Police Intelligence Service, the PET is tasked with domestic counterterrorism and counterintelligence.

In its statement on Thursday, the PET said that four individuals had been arrested the day before during “searches at various addresses” in Denmark. It did not disclose the identities of the four suspects, but said they were all current or former members of Danish intelligence agencies. At least one of them is believed to be a current or former employee of the PET itself. Denmark’s external intelligence agency, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE, or DDIS in English), is also involved, according to reports.

The four suspects are accused of having disclosed “highly classified information from the intelligence services”, according to the information made available by the PET on Thursday. However, PET officials declined requests to discuss further details about the case, stating only that the arrests came after a lengthy counterintelligence investigation, which continues at this time. All four suspects have now been charged with violating Section 109(1) of the Danish Criminal Code, which is the standard law used by Danish prosecutors in espionage cases.

The last major counterintelligence case in Denmark was in 2012, when a Finnish professor at the University of Copenhagen, Timo Kivimäki, was convicted and sentenced to a short prison sentence for spying for Russia. Kivimäki, who today continues to work as an academic, claims that he carried out contractual consulting work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, but denies that he knowingly contacted Russian intelligence operatives in the course of his consulting duties.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 13 December 2021 | Permalink

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Denmark arrests three Iranian separatists for spying for Saudi Arabia

February 5, 2020 by Leave a comment

Finn Borch AndersenAuthorities in Denmark have announced the arrests of three Iranian Arab separatists, who are charged with carrying out espionage on behalf of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia. The arrests were announced on Monday by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, known as PET.

According to the PET, the three Iranians are members of a group calling itself the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA). Known also as Al-Ahwaziya, the group was established in 1980. It calls for a separate state for ethnic Arabs who live the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, in Iran’s southwest.

PET director Finn Borch Andersen told reporters on Monday that the three Iranians were recruited in 2012 by the General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Saudi Arabia’s primary intelligence agency. They allegedly spied on pro-Iranian groups and individuals in Denmark and other countries northern Europe on behalf of the GID. They reported regularly to their handler, who was an undercover intelligence officer at the Saudi embassy in Copenhagen, according to the PET.

In October 2018, one of the three Iranian men was targeted for assassination by Iranian intelligence, but Danish authorities managed to prevent it with an elaborate security operation. A Norwegian man of Iranian background was arrested during the operation and remains in detention in Denmark. Throughout that time, the PET continued to monitor the three Iranian separatists, and proceeded to arrest them this week.

Late on Monday, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Saudi ambassador to Copenhagen in order to file an official complaint about Saudi espionage activities on Danish soil. According to the Danish media, the ambassador of Denmark to Saudi Arabia contacted the oil kingdom’s government to protest about the incident.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 05 February 2020 | Permalink

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Denmark recalls its envoy from Tehran, accuses Iran of assassination plot

October 30, 2018 by Leave a comment

Finn Borch AndersenThe Danish government has recalled its ambassador from Iran and has accused the intelligence services of the Islamic Republic of plotting an assassination operation on Danish soil. Danish government officials also said that Copenhagen would seek to impose further economic and diplomatic sanctions on Tehran, in coordination with the European Union. The accusations against Iran were leveled during an emergency news conference in the Danish capital on Tuesday, led by Anders Samuelsen, Denmark’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Finn Borch Andersen (pictured), Director of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, known as PET.

The two men said that “an Iranian intelligence agency” had planned “an attack on Danish soil”, which  Defense Minister Samuelsen condemned as “completely unacceptable”. PET Director Andersen said that a Norwegian national of Iranian background had been arrested in Sweden on October 21, and was now in custody awaiting extradition to Denmark. The arrestee is an employee of Iranian intelligence, said Andersen, and had been observed conducting surveillance against a Danish-based leading member of an Iranian separatist group. The alleged target is a member of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA), a hardline separatist group campaigning for a separate homeland for Iran’s Arab minority. Approximately 2 percent of Iranians (around 1.5 million people) belong to the country’s ethnic Arab population. Most of them are concentrated in Khuzestan, a region in Iran’s oil-rich southwest, which borders neighboring Iraq. Some of these ethnic Arabs seek autonomy from Tehran, which they see as an alien regime. ASMLA represents the militant wing of Iran’s separatist Arab community and has a history of staging terrorist attacks inside Iran. Last September, the group claimed it was behind an armed attack on a military parade in the city of Ahvaz —a major urban center in Iran’s Arab-speaking region— which killed 24 people, including some women and children. Later, however, a representative of the group retracted the claim.

On Tuesday, several Iranian officials issued strong denials of the Danish government’s allegations. Speaking in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi dismissed Denmark’s claims as “spiteful”. He added that the timing of reports linking Iran to assassination operations on European soil were suspect and described them as “a plot by [Iran’s] enemies to damage Tehran’s growing relations with European countries”. Earlier this month, France seized the financial assets of individuals whom it described as Iranian spies, after blaming Tehran for a foiled bomb attack in Paris. The move followed the arrest of six people in France, Germany and Belgium, who allegedly planned to bomb the annual conference of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) last June. The NCRI is led by Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a militant group with roots in radical Islam and Marxism, which Iran sees as a terrorist organization.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 31 October 2018 | Permalink

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Denmark arrests two for attempting to procure drones for ISIS

September 27, 2018 by 1 Comment

ISIS UAV droneDanish Police have announced the arrest of two men who attempted to procure unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) —commonly known as drones— on behalf of the Islamic State in Syria. In a press statement issued on Wednesday, Denmark’s State Police said it worked closely with the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) to arrest the two men, as part of “a long-term investigation” that continues to take place in the Greater Copenhagen area.

According to the press statement, the two men are members of Danish-based Islamist groups and were known to police prior to their arrest this week. They are also believed to be part of a larger network of Islamist activists in the Scandinavian country who support the Islamic State —also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). A police spokesman said on Wednesday that the case involves the “procurement and facilitation” of unmanned aerial vehicle components, “including drones, from Denmark to the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq”. The components were procured with the purpose of being used in reconnaissance and combat operations abroad by the militant group, he added.

This is the second time that Danish authorities have arrested individuals for attempting to procure drones and drone equipment for the Islamic State. A year ago, a 28-year-old man was charged with shipping disassembled drone equipment and infrared cameras to an address in Turkey. The shipped material was collected up by a Turkish couple who were Islamic State members and were arrested following an international police operation. The Islamic State has been using drones [.pdf] since October of 2016, when it deployed a bomb-laden UAV to kill two Kurdish soldiers. In January of last year, the militant group aired propaganda footage showing several cases of dropping bombs on adversary troops and civilians using specially modified drones.

The two men arrested this week are expected to appear in court on Thursday. It is believed that state prosecutors will request a closed-door hearing, since the investigation against the network of ISIS supporters in Denmark is ongoing.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 27 September 2018 | Permalink

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Danish court halts sales of book written by former spy boss (updated)

October 11, 2016 by 4 Comments

Jakob Scharf's "Ten Years With the PET"

Jakob Scharf’s “Ten Years With the PET”

A court in Denmark has issued an injunction that prevents retail outlets from selling a book written by the former director of the country’s domestic intelligence agency. Titled Seven Years with the PET, the book is based on a series of interviews with Jakob Scharf, who directed Denmark’s Police Intelligence Service (PET) from 2007 to 2013. The book was scheduled for general release in bookstores across the country on October 17 by its publisher, People’s Press. By the end of the first week of October, the Copenhagen-based publisher had already supplied 5,000 copies of the book to 40 bookstores across Denmark, and several copies had already found their way into the hands of readers.

But last Friday night, the PET filed a request for an injunction to be placed on retail sales of the book, arguing that its pages might contain information pertaining to state secrets. The injunction was granted by a court in Copenhagen overnight, and communicated in the early hours of Saturday morning to the publisher, two online retailers and over 40 bookstores. The PET is listed as the requester of the injunction, and a rarely used ‘state secrets’ clause is given as justification for the urgent measure. On Saturday, the current director of the PET, Finn Borch Andersen, spoke to Denmark’s TV2 channel about the injunction. He told the television station that his agency filed the injunction after commercials appeared on television, advertising the book as “an exposure of PET operations”. He added that PET personnel “are currently reading” the book and that the agency will ask for the injunction to be lifted if no sensitive information is found.

But on Monday, Danish newspaper Politiken said it would defy the court injunction and publish excerpts of Scharf’s book. Speaking on the same day, the paper’s editor-in-chief, Christian Jensen, dismissed the ban, which he said “directly attacks the fundamental liberties on which our open society and free press depends”. Politiken had been scheduled to serialize Scharf’s book and was among the recipients of the court injunction.

The PET made headlines in 2012, after it was revealed that one of its double agents, Morten Storm, successfully infiltrated al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The revelation caused controversy in Denmark because of Storm’s admission that he broke domestic and international law in the course of his activities, and led to a pledge by the country’s justice minister to impose more governmental control over the PET. Scharf, who led the agency from 2007 to 2013, was head of the organization after Denmark became targeted by Islamist extremists, following the publication in 2005 of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The latter is considered sacrilegious by literalist Muslims, including organizations that espouse militant versions of Islam.

Update Oct. 11, 2016, 12:35 GMT: It appears that Politiken proceeded to publish nearly the entire book on Sunday and Monday. The PET has just announced that it will withdraw its injunction request against the publication of the book, because it cannot be practically enforced at this point.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 11 October 2016 | Permalink

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News you may have missed #892 (legislative update)

May 7, 2015 by Leave a comment

Jens MadsenBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
►►Canadian lawmakers vote to expand spy powers. Legislation that would dramatically expand the powers of Canada’s spy agency has cleared a key hurdle. The House of Commons on Wednesday approved the Anti-Terror Act, which was spurred by last year’s attack on parliament. The act would give the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) the ability to operate overseas and make preventative arrests. It also makes it easier for police to arrest and detain individuals without charge. Dominated by the Conservative party, the Senate is expected to approve the act before June.
►►Danish spy chief resigns over Islamist attacks. The head of Denmark’s Police Intelligence Service (PET), Jens Madsen, quit just hours before a report was due to be released into February’s fatal shootings in Copenhagen by an Islamist. Omar El-Hussein killed two people at a free speech debate and a synagogue before being shot dead by police. “It’s no secret that it is a very demanding position,” said Madsen, without giving a reason for his resignation. Justice Minister Mette Frederiksen declined to say whether the move was linked to criticisms of the police response to the attack.
►►OSCE urges France to reconsider controversial spying bill. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe urged French lawmakers to reconsider provisions of a proposed law that would expand government surveillance, a measure that was backed by French parliamentarians on Tuesday, despite criticism from rights groups. “If enforced, these practices will impact the right of journalists to protect the confidentiality of sources and their overall work”, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic said Wednesday. “If confidentiality of sources is not safeguarded within a trusted communications environment, the right of journalists to seek and obtain information of public interest would be seriously endangered”, he added

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News you may have missed #816

December 11, 2012 by Leave a comment

Kim Jong-namBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Danish minister vows more control over spy agency. Following the uproar created by the revelations from former Danish secret service (PET) agent Morten Storm, Denmark’s Minister of Justice, Morten Bødskov, is now calling for parliament to have more control over the domestic intelligence agency. In an interview with Berlingske newspaper, Bødskov said that he is seeking increased powers for parliament’s Kontroludvalg, a committee established in 1964 to oversee PET. The move comes in response to the many questions that have arisen about PET’s actions following Storm’s decision to contribute to a series of articles in Jyllands-Posten newspaper that chronicled his time as a PET double-agent.
►►South Korea jails alleged North Korean assassin. A South Korean court has jailed an unidentified North Korean spy reportedly ordered to attack Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-nam, who is believed to have fallen out of favor with Kim Jong-il in 2001, was thought to have been living in Macau, but media reports indicate he may have moved to Singapore. South Korean media said the alleged assassin had spent a decade in China tracking down North Korean defectors before coming to the South, and that he had admitted trying to organize “a hit-and-run accident” targeting Kim Jong-nam.
►►US Pentagon to double the size of its worldwide spy network. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the US Pentagon’s military intelligence unit, is aiming to recruit 1,600 intelligence collectors —up from the several hundred overseas agents it has employed in recent years. The DIA’s new recruits would include military attachés and others who do not work undercover. But US officials say that the growth will be driven a new generation of spies who will take their orders from the Department of Defense. The project is reportedly aimed at transforming the DIA into a spy service more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units.

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Danish Muslim convert claims he was CIA’s mole inside al-Qaeda

October 12, 2012 by 8 Comments

Morten StormBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Danish citizen who converted to Islam in the early 2000s claims he was a spy for the United States Central Intelligence Agency and helped track down an American-born Islamist cleric who was killed by a drone strike in 2010. The man, who goes by the name Morten Storm, told Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that he converted to Islam while living in the United Kingdom. But he quickly grew disillusioned, he said, and in 2006 he was recruited by the Danish Police Intelligence Service (PET). In subsequent years, he traveled several times to Yemen on PET missions, and gradually managed to gain the trust of members of the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Eventually, he said, he grew close to one of AQAP’s central figures, the American-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. At that point, claims Storm, the PET turned him over to the CIA, who allegedly used him to gather information on al-Awlaki. The Danish Muslim convert claims that his role as a CIA informant was so important that US President Barack Obama knows his name. He also told the paper that it was his information that eventually helped the CIA track and assassinate the charismatic cleric. According to Storm, the CIA supplied him with a memory stick that contained a stealth Global Positioning System tracking device. He sent the memory stick to al-Awlaki, who used it on his computer, thus allowing the CIA to track him down. In April 2010, President Obama ordered that al-Awlaki’s name be included on a list of individuals that the CIA was officially authorized to kill. Little less than a year later, on September 30, 2011, the cleric and three other suspected members of AQAP were killed when their car was hit by two Hellfire missiles in Yemen’s northern al-Jawf province. Read more of this post

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Denmark university professor faces charges of spying for Russia

April 17, 2012 by Leave a comment

Timo KivimäkiBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Authorities in Denmark have charged a university professor with assisting “foreign intelligence operatives”, believed to be Russian. Professor Timo Kivimäki, a conflict resolution expert, who teaches international politics at the University of Copenhagen, is accused of “providing or attempting to provide” information to four Russian government officials on several documented instances between 2005 and 2010. The indictment claims Kivimäki, who was born in Finland, intended to give the Russians “information relating to individuals and subjects connected with intelligence activities”. The charges were filed after a lengthy investigation, launched in 2009 by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) in cooperation with Finland’s Security Intelligence Service (SUPO). The university professor spoke to leading Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and admitted that he carried out contractual “consulting work” for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, for six years. He said he was paid approximately €16,000 (US$20,000) for his services, but denied that he knowingly contacted Russian intelligence operatives in the course of his consulting duties. According to Kivimäki, the Russian officials he interacted with appeared to be “diplomats, not spies”. He also pointed to the fact that none of the Russian officials he worked with as a consultant were apprehended or expelled by Danish counterintelligence, as is customary in such cases. Despite its relatively small size, Denmark had its share of international intelligence activity during the Cold War. During that period, PET amassed detailed files on approximately 300,000 Danish citizens considered to be “leftist sympathizers”. More recently, in November of 2010, media reports from Denmark suggested that the US embassy in Copenhagen maintained a network of local former police and intelligence officers, who were conducting “illegal systematic surveillance of Danish citizens”. Read more of this post

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Danish Commission absolves secret services of Cold War violations

June 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

Leif Aamand

Leif Aamand

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. In 1999, the Danish government set up the Police Intelligence Service (PET) Commission to review PET’s practice of keeping files on Danish citizens during the Cold War. After ten years, 4,600 pages and $13 million in public funds, the Commission has announced that PET’s activities during the Cold War largely fell within its mandate and that the organization was “never […] a state [with]in a state that acted according to its own norms”. The Commission concluded this despite discovering that PET systematically violated a September 1968 government decree preventing government departments from keeping files on Danish citizens based on their legal political activities. The Commission’s report reveals that the violation was authorized by a secret memorandum from the Danish Ministry of Justice, which allowed PET to continue its political vetting of Danish citizens. As a result, PET amassed detailed files on approximately 300,000 Danes, targeting mostly “Trotskyists, anarchists and left-wing revolutionary groups”, as well as members of Denmark’s Left Socialist Party. Read more of this post

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