Russia seeks spy swap for married couple convicted in Germany
Russia is reportedly seeking a "spy swap" for a married couple convicted of espionage for the Kremlin in Germany.
Heidrun (front) and her husband Andreas Anschlag (pixellated) face each other at a regional court in Stuttgart, southern Germany Photo: AFP/GETTY
By Tom Parfitt, Moscow and Jeevan Vasagar in Berlin
2:29PM BST 15 Jul 2013
Citing intelligence sources in Moscow, Kommersant newspaper said Russia wanted Berlin to hand over Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, 55 and 52, whose surname means 'attack' in German, in exchange for one or more people currently in jail in Russia for working for Western spy services.
Horst-Dieter Poetschke, the couple's lawyer, reportedly said the swap could happen at "any moment".
Mr and Mrs Anschlag – code-named Pit and Tina, and thought to be Russians – were convicted of espionage earlier this month, and sentenced to six-and-a-half and five-and-a-half years in prison respectively. The couple were said to have passed thousands of EU and Nato secrets to the Soviet KGB and then Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service over a 23-year period. Much of the classified material came from a Dutch diplomat whom they recruited.
German media suggested the couple were exposed in 2011 by the same mole who tipped off the FBI about a ring of sleeper agents in the US, including Anna Chapman, which was broken up the previous year.
The middle-aged Anschlags, who pretended to be Austrians born in Argentina and Peru, used "dead letter drops" to communicate with their informers and then transmitted information to Moscow via satellite. Some messages were passed via coded comments on YouTube videos where Mrs Anschlag's online alias was Alpenkuh1 (Alpine cow 1).
Kommersant's sources said Russia had not offered a spy swap for the Anschlags earlier because it hoped to find out more during their trial about what information the FBI had passed to its European partners.
"The process of consultation about a possible exchange began only very recently, after the verdict," said one source. "We're going to get them out."
Two possible candidates for swapping are Valery Mikhailov, a former Federal Security Service colonel sentenced to 18 years last year for passing secrets to the CIA; and Andrew Dumenkov, jailed for 12-years in 2006 for attempting to sell secrets about Russian missile technology to German intelligence. Mr Dumenkov's wife however said her husband had not been approached, and was hoping to be released on parole later this year.
Miss Chapman and nine other sleeper agents were flown from the US to Vienna, Austria, to be part of the first "spy swap" since the Cold War in 2010 where they were exchanged for four Russian prisoners brought from Moscow who were earlier convicted of spying.
Vladimir Putin's spokesman said the Russian president had not discussed the fate of the Anschlags with Angela Merkel of Germany.
Mr Poetschke refused a request for comment.
