A judge of Germany's Federal Court of Justice issued a formal arrest warrant against a former spy chief accused of buying secret documents and using them in an analysis for a foreign intelligence service, the Office of the Federal Prosecutor said on Wednesday.
The case of 80-year-old August Hanning, detained on Tuesday over suspected espionage and attempted treason, has shocked the German intelligence community and lawmakers, and could emerge as one of the biggest leaks of classified documents in Germany since the end of the Cold War.
It has also raised concerns that foreign intelligence agencies could cut Germany off from important information.
Federal prosecutors have not identified the foreign intelligence service, and it is unclear whether Hanning's alleged analysis reached its intended recipient.
Der Spiegel news magazine reported late on Tuesday that investigators were pursuing a possible connection to Azerbaijan. It reported Hanning had been in contact with an agent from the country. Azerbaijan on Wednesday denied any connection.
Lawyer says Hanning did not pass along information 'to detriment of Germany'
Hanning on Tuesday did not respond to a request for comment.
"While it is true that he was in possession of confidential documents, the allegation that he passed on information contained therein to the detriment of Germany, let alone for payment, is incorrect," his lawyer told German newspaper Die Welt on Wednesday.
A judge at the Federal Court of Justice in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe issued the arrest warrant, federal prosecutors said.
The official warrant allows authorities to keep Hanning in custody.
Azerbaijan's Media and Broadcasting Council issued a statement saying the allegations were groundless disinformation.
"The malicious intent of the forces behind this disinformation operation is to damage Azerbaijan-Germany relations," the council said.
A senior Azerbaijani government official told Reuters that Baku had contacted German intelligence services through official channels and had been told that the case had no connection to Azerbaijani intelligence.
German BND Chief of Staff in custody
Hanning was head of the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence service, from 1998 to 2005.
Prosecutors allege that in 2010 Hanning agreed to pay for confidential information from an official identified as Manfred D, who served as chief of staff to successive BND heads prior to his retirement in March this year.
His position potentially gave him access to some of Germany's most current intelligence at the time that prosecutors say documents were being siphoned from the service.
Manfred D. was detained on Tuesday and also placed under formal arrest on Wednesday.
Prosecutors on Tuesday said that the investigation centered on suspicion that Hanning received approximately 2,000 documents from D. through June 2022. "Some of these documents were classified," a spokesperson for the prosecution service said.
It is still unclear what level of secrecy the potentially leaked documents had.
Marc Henrichmann, head of the parliamentary committee that oversees the intelligence services, said he was "pretty stunned" by the case.
But he downplayed comparisons to the 1970s case of East German spy Guenther Guillaume, secretary of Chancellor Willy Brandt, who eventually stepped down over the affair.
"I find (that comparison) a bit of a stretch at the moment, because we don't even know exactly what happened there yet," Henrichmann told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.