Former aide to AfD politician handed prison sentence for China spying

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DRESDEN, Germany (Reuters) -A former assistant to a top politician for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was sentenced on Tuesday to nearly five years in prison for spying for China in a case that has fuelled concern about Europe being a target for Chinese espionage.

The defendant, identified only as German national Jian G. in line with German privacy rules, had been spying on Chinese dissidents in Europe and sharing information from the European parliament with Chinese intelligence, a judge for the Dresden Higher Regional Court said.

Jian G. had been charged with working for a Chinese intelligence service since 2002 and gathering documents and files from the European Parliament while working for Maximilian Krah, a former European lawmaker who now represents the AfD in Germany’s national parliament.

The Chinese embassy in Germany did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Beijing has previously denied accusations of espionage in Europe.

Krah said on Tuesday he looked forward to gaining more “clarity about the espionage activities of which (he) was a victim” via the court’s written reasoning that is yet to be published, adding that he had significantly tightened security in his office after the arrest.

The espionage charges were levelled at a time when Krah had been campaigning as the AfD’s lead candidate for the European parliament and fomented worries about the pro-China and pro-Russia views of some senior members of the party.

(Reporting by Oliver Denzer in Dresden and Sarah Marsh in BerlinEditing by Ludwig Burger)