The indictment of the 31-year-old citizen of Pakistan, Syed Mustufa H, said he is suspected of intelligence activity from July 2015 to July 2016 on behalf of Iran’s regime. The federal prosecutor alleged that Syed Mustufa H spied on “institutions and persons.”
The indictment states the accused was in contact since 2011 with a person from Iran’s intelligence agency who is responsible for espionage in Europe. The indictment said Syed Mustufa spied on an economic college in Paris, a professor who teaches at the college, as well as the former head of the German-Israel friendship society.
Iran’s regime paid Syed Mustufa for the information he secured, according to the indictment.
In July, a Berlin court convicted an Iranian man of espionage on behalf of Iran’s regime. The 32-year-old man was sentenced to nearly two and- a-half years in prison for spying on Iranian dissidents in Germany.
According to German intelligence reports reviewed by The Jerusalem Post, Iran ratcheted up its spy network in the Federal Republic in 2015. Iran has a vast espionage infrastructure in the country that coordinates with its embassy in Berlin.
Ulrike Becker, a spokeswoman for Stop the Bomb, which seeks to prevent a nuclear- armed Iran, said on Wednesday: “The coordination of German authorities with the terrorist apparatus of the Iranian regime is a slap in the face of all democrats and an open threat against Iranians living in Germany. It shows where the cooperation with Rouhani leads to. The planned visit of Rouhani to Germany has to be canceled immediately.”
The Merkel administration has repeatedly said it will not normalize relations with Iran until the Islamic Republic recognizes Israel’s right to exist.
Iran has engaged in a wave of executions, including 765 in 2015. In July, Iran hanged Hassan Afshar, 19, a teenager who is believed to be gay, in Arak Prison in Markazi province after he was convicted of “forced male-to-male anal intercourse” in early 2015.
Since Iran signed the nuclear deal with Germany and other world powers in July 2015, the Federal Republic has ramped up trade with Tehran. German exports to Iran increased by 15 percent in the first half of 2016 over the same period a year earlier, to €1.13 billion.