A German spy arrested for allegedly offering to help Islamic militants to bomb offices of the country’s intelligence agency was a onetime gay porn actor who secretly converted to Islam two years ago.
The Washington Post reports that the secret life of the 51-year-old married father of four unfolded two weeks ago when German intelligence agents spotted him in a radical chat room. After claiming to be a German spy, the German citizen of Spanish descent was lured to a private chat room, where he revealed so many key details that the agents positively identified him and arrested him the next day.
Authorities announced on Tuesday that he was arrested on suspicion of preparing to commit a violent act and for violating secrecy laws. But his role as a gay porn star — performing as recently as 2011, under the same stage name as the alias he used in the chat room — could embolden critics of Germany’s domestic spy agency, known as the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
Hans-Christian Ströbele, a member of the Parliamentary Control Committee that oversees German intelligence services, told the newspaper that “it’s not only bizarre, but also quite scary” that the agency failed to property vet the Islamist turncoat.
The agency “needs to tell us immediately what exactly happened and how it could happen that somebody like this was hired,” Ströbele told the Washington Post.
One senior BfV official defended the agency, saying it was nearly impossible to uncover his double life.
“How should anyone have known this? He had acted under different names and identities online,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the newspaper. “Not his real name. One has to say that we were able to find out about all this very quickly and also actions were taken fast.”
Authorities are withholding the man’s name, as well as the alias he used as a porn actor and in radical chat rooms. Prior to his hiring in April, the man was thoroughly vetted, including during interviews with former employers and acquaintances. Those who have since interviewed the suspect say he may have been mentally ill and possibly had multiple personalities, one senior official said.
While in custody, officials said, the man admitted that he was a secret convert to Islam — and someone who planned from the get-go to infiltrate the spy agency to then tip off “his religious brothers” to upcoming or ongoing investigations, according to the Washington Post. He said an attack against “infidels” was “in the interest of Allah,” prosecutors in Dusseldorf said, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Evidence that the suspect provided details to Islamic militants has not yet been found, but German politicians are demanding answers and calling for a review of vetting procedures within the spy agency.
“One can be grateful that this came out,” André Hahn, a member of the agency’s parliamentary control committee from the Left Party, told the Washington Post. “But it appears to have been rather a coincidence. It could also have happened that he would have worked there for years.”
There are an estimated 40,000 Islamists in Germany, including 9,200 of an ultraconservative sect known as Salafists, Hans-George Maassen, who leads the agency, told Reuters earlier this month.
“We remain a target of Islamic terrorism and we have to assume that Islamic State or other terrorist organizations will carry out an attack in Germany if they can,” Maassen said at the time.
Maassen will meet with the German parliament’s intelligence oversight committee Wednesday to discuss the matter, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Meanwhile, a BfV spokesman declined to provide details on the man’s position at the agency or when he joined. He also declined to comment on a report in Germany’s Die Welt newspaper that the 51-year-old had planned to explode a bomb at the agency’s central office in Cologne, Reuters reports. His arrest was first reported by Germany’s Der Spiegel.
“There is no evidence to date that there is a concrete danger to the security of the BfV or its employees,” the spokesman said. “The man is accused of making Islamist statements on the internet using a false name and of revealing internal agency material in internet chat rooms.”