German Trial Spotlights Alleged Spies
By DAVID CRAWFORD and VANESSA FUHRMANS
MARBURG, Germany—Apart from traces of an Eastern European accent, Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag appeared to be a typical couple in this medieval German university town. She was a housewife who played computer games in their backyard. He was an automotive engineer who often traveled for work.
But in a trial unfolding in a Stuttgart courtroom, the two are accused of working for more than two decades as Russian spies, living an unremarkable middle-class life as the Anschlags while passing on secrets of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union to Soviet, and later Russian, intelligence services. Their true identities aren't known to German prosecutors or authorities, according to court officials, who said even the couple's own daughter didn't know their real names or profession.
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German state lawyers attend the trial of accused Russian spies, a couple who identified themselves as the Anschlags, in Stuttgart in January.
Witness testimony at the trial, which began in January and is expected to last until June, promises a rare look at Russia's espionage efforts and the lives of the agents it recruited. Such insights were largely thwarted when 10 members of a Russian spy ring were exposed in the U.S. in 2010 and deported soon after.
German authorities proposed a spy swap following the couple's October 2011 arrest, wanting to avoid a trial to prevent their own spy-tracking methods from being revealed, said people familiar with the matter. But German and Russian authorities haven't agreed to a swap.
The defendants—whom prosecutors are trying under their Anschlag aliases—haven't admitted that they were spies, nor has Russia. But the couple has confirmed to prosecutors that they are Russian citizens and that Russian authorities are providing consular assistance to the defendants, who have made no statements in court, said Horst-Dieter Pötschke, Mr. Anschlag's lawyer. He said he doesn't know their real names.
Nadine Nitz, one of two lawyers representing Mrs. Anschlag, declined to comment. Their daughter, now a medical student in Germany, couldn't be reached for comment.
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The couple's home in the town of Marburg.
The apparent facade of the Anschlags' lives fell away when a German SWAT team raided their two-story home in a quiet Marburg neighborhood. Mrs. Anschlag was deciphering an encrypted radio message when the commandos stormed in, prosecutors say.
German prosecutors have charged the husband-and-wife team with espionage, saying they relayed thousands of secrets and confidential documents via satellite, the Internet and inconspicuous containers hidden in public places, known as dead-letter boxes. The couple, who authorities allege posed as Austrian nationals of Latin American descent, is also accused of using falsified documents to conceal their true identities. If convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison.
In the indictment, prosecutors say the two separately applied for Austrian passports in 1984 with fake documents showing he was an Austrian born in Argentina and that she was born in Peru. They married in 1990 while Mr. Anschlag was studying mechanical engineering in Germany and had their daughter soon after, building a life that would serve as a cover for their alleged espionage.
In Marburg, where the Anschlags moved in recent years, the family seemed to lead a discreet if affluent life, according to neighbors. They rented a white, pitched-roof house in an upscale neighborhood with panoramic vistas overlooking forests and rolling fields.
Andreas Anschlag, presumed to be in his early 50s, worked for several auto-supply firms over the years, prosecutors said, while German media reports say his wife, whose Austrian passport puts her age at 48, played the occasional tennis match.
Werner Jäger, a next-door neighbor, said Mrs. Anschlag would often stretch out with her laptop in a lounge chair outside and sometimes chat with him from her yard. "We knew they spoke with Eastern European accents, but we never suspected they were spies," he said.
In an upstairs room in their home, prosecutors allege, Mrs. Anschlag used special equipment to transmit encrypted information to Moscow via satellite at set times and receive encoded radio messages from the couple's spymasters. In some instances, they say, she embedded secret messages in posts of personal videos on YouTube, using the handle Alpenkuh1, German for Alpine Cow 1.
"They must have had lots of equipment," said Stephen McGarva, who lives with his family in the former Anschlag residence on the outskirts of Marburg, pointing to numerous electric wall sockets and satellite connections in a two-room suite with large skylight windows that authorities say Mrs. Anschlag used as an office. The Anschlags, whose alleged code names with their spymasters were "Pit" and "Tina," received roughly €100,000 ($130,000) annually in recent years from the Russians, prosecutors say.
According to the indictment, the Anschlags' biggest espionage assignment appears to have been relaying messages from a Dutch diplomat allegedly recruited by Russian intelligence. Prosecutors say Mr. Anschlag met the Dutch foreign ministry official, Raymond Valentino Poeteray, at an academic conference in 2003. Between 2008 and 2011, Mr. Anschlag allegedly paid him roughly €72,000 in return for documents on confidential NATO meetings and EU negotiations, particularly concerning Russian relations.
Mr. Poeteray was arrested in 2012 and faces separate charges in the Netherlands, according to court records. He couldn't be reached for comment. In an email, his lawyer declined to comment. In media reports, the lawyer has denied the allegations.
Mr. Pötschke, Mr. Anschlag's lawyer, said information from the probe of the U.S.-Russian spy ring appeared to have helped lead German counterintelligence officials to his client. But he added that prosecutors allege that the initial tip seemed to come from Austria in 2011, after an audit of passports issued in the 1980s showed the Anschlags' documentation appeared to come from deceased Austrians.
Prosecutors say the couple's handlers warned them of their possible arrest during a meeting in Serbia in the summer of 2011. They say in the indictment that Mr. Anschlag had recently sold his car and given notice to quit his job around the time he was apprehended.
In February, the German daily Die Welt reported German officials had unsuccessfully proposed exchanging the couple for Valery Mikhailov, a retired Russian intelligence official arrested in 2010 and sentenced to 18 years in prison on charges of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Volker Foertsch, a former director of spy operations in Germany's foreign intelligence service in the 1990s, said he wasn't surprised that Russia rejected the deal. Imprisoned Western agents such as Mr. Mikhailov are bigger fish than the Anschlags are alleged to be.
"Illegal agents" working without diplomatic cover, he said, "expect to serve jail time if they're caught."
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