Spy Gets Probation in Germany

A US national was given a 12-month suspended jail sentence in Germany on Thursday after having been found guilty to trying to sell sensitive military information to China. The 43-year-old woman, who is of German origin and whose name was given only as Michaela T., tried to sell the operating manuals to a weapons system on the new German class 212A submarine, which she had translated. The regional high court in Koblenz, western Germany ruled that her crime had been a minor one and that no real harm would have been caused if the information had fallen into Chinese hands. No appeal is expected to be launched by prosecutors or the defense. According to evidence submitted to the court, after arguing with her employer over fees the defendant offered the operating manuals to the Chinese embassy in Canada. She then met with a man in October 2003 who she thought was a Chinese spy, but who in reality was a Canadian agent, and was given 105,000 Canadian dollars (€64,000, $85,000) in exchange for the documents. The woman, who had become a naturalized US citizen before moving to Canada, was arrested in the Rhineland-Palatinate region of western Germany in September this year while she was visiting her parents there.