This came out during a court hearing on Monday, where a previous name ban in the case was lifted.
Findsen has led the Defense Intelligence Service (FE) for six years and is according to Danmarks Radio charged with leakage of «highly classified information». He was arrested on December 8 and has been in custody since.
Three other current and former employees of FE and the Danish Surveillance Police (PET) were also arrested and charged in the case. Only Findsen is still in custody.
According to Danmarks Radio, the case concerns the leakage of classified information to the Danish media, but it has not been confirmed which documents or media are in question.
However, the charge falls under the very serious provision on “treason” in the Danish penal code, which can be punished with up to twelve years in prison. The section has not been in use for 40 years in Denmark.
Denies criminal guilt
Lars Findsen himself denies that he has done anything wrong and calls the case against him “crazy”.
– I deny criminal guilt and want the charge to be public. This is crazy, Findsen told the journalists on their way to court on Monday.
Shocked Dane
– It’s world history. Something like this has never happened before. It is catastrophic for the Danish intelligence service and sends a signal that something “rotten in the state of Denmark” says Hans Jørgen Bonnichsen to
Berlingske . Bonnichsen is a former head of the Police Intelligence Service in Denmark and has previously collaborated with Findsen.
Peer Henrik Hansen, who is the general manager of Langelandsfortet, a Danish war museum, is also shocked.
– I do not remember a single similar case. At least not in Denmark nor abroad. It is reminiscent of the Cold War, that you have a spy chief who is in custody for having leaked secret information, Hansen says to Berlingske. In addition to being the leader of Langelandsfortet, Hansen has a doctorate in the Cold War and intelligence service.
Monitored It is PET that has been investigating the case for a long time, and Findsen is said to have been monitored and intercepted.
Few have over the years kept more secrets in Denmark than 57 years old Findsen, who shortly after the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 was appointed head of PET.
Seven years later he became head of the Ministry of Defense, before he took over as head of FE in 2015.
Findsen has also had a permanent seat on the Danish government’s security committee for the past 20 years.
Warning editors
The case against the FE boss goes behind closed doors , but the newspaper Politiken
believes it can shed light on the background for the charges against Findsen and the other three.
In December, PET chief Finn Borch Andersen and acting FE chief Svend Larsen visited several Danish editors-in-chief and warned of the consequences of publishing hem stamped information.
Weekendavisen’s editor-in-chief Martin Krasnik said afterwards that three specific issues were mentioned during the meeting. One is about the Dane Ahmed Samsam, who has been convicted of terrorism in Spain, but who according to the newspaper Berlingske has been an agent for Danish intelligence.
NSA cooperation 4 The third case the two intelligence chiefs warned against digging too deep into, was Denmark’s collaboration with the American signal intelligence organization National Security Agency (NSA). This collaboration has been described in detail by several Danish media.
In August 2020, the Authority for the Danish Intelligence Services sharply criticized the FE in connection with the NSA case, and Findsen and four other leaders were taken out of service.
A secret commission has since investigated the allegations that FE led the inspection behind the light and exposed Danes to an unjustified risk of surveillance in connection with their close cooperation with the NSA, writes Politiken.
In all three cases, the Danish media reproduced classified information, and in this connection at least eight Danish journalists from various media in the previous week taken in for questioning by the police.
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