A German court has handed a Russian scientist a one-year suspended sentence for spying after he admitted to supplying publicly available information on a European rocket program to an employee of the Russian Consulate General in Munich.
The 30-year-old researcher at the University of Augsburg, who has been identified only as Ilnur N., has denied he is an agent of the Russian secret service, saying he did not intentionally do anything wrong as he knew nothing about the activities of the man he spoke with and that the information was already public.
But the presiding judge at the Higher Regional Court in Munich said on April 13 that nonetheless the researcher had "come to terms with the fact that he had done research for a Russian secret service."
The convicted man allegedly received a total of 2,500 euros ($2,700) in cash in exchange for the information he provided.