Custody dispute and attempted kidnapping - this is how the former intelligence chief was arrested

The foreign intelligence service BND is Germany's equivalent of the CIA.

From 1998 to 2005, the organisation's head was August Hanning. Eleven years later, he is believed to have shared classified documents with a foreign power. The investigators have not communicated which country it is about.

On Tuesday, August Hanning was arrested, suspected of espionage and treason.

- It is a startling case, something like this has not happened in Germany for a long time, says ARD's correspondent in Berlin, Florian Flade.

But the scandal might never have come to light had Hanning not appeared in another high-profile investigation into an attempted child abduction – an investigation that later led to a trial.

At the center of the case is a woman who is the heir to a famous German steakhouse chain. In 2022, she found herself in a custody dispute with her former husband. After a visit to their father in Denmark, the couple's child did not come home - not even after a court ruled that the mother had custody.

According to the investigation, she then turned to Hanning, who at the time was the head of a security company. He then allegedly hatched a plan to kidnap the children.

The idea was that the children would be intercepted on their way home from school. People would distract their friends so the children could then be led to the woman's car.

But the plan failed when the father alerted the police after seeing unknown people at his house.

At the turn of the year 2023-2024, another attempt was made, this time more aggressively. The agents beat the father and took the children to their mother.

Hanning was investigated for having been involved in the first, failed attempt. When the police searched his home, classified documents from the foreign intelligence service BND were found.

The documents are said to have been dated as far back as June 2022, long after Hanning quit as BND president. Police suspect that another person on the inside, who is also a suspect, supplied him with them.

The information Hanning received is said to be, among other things, minutes from security meetings in the German Chancellor's office. Other documents contain sensitive information about Iran's nuclear weapons program or the Russian army, according to German media. Among them should be documents from other allied security services.

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