Man charged with spying for Syria in Germany

German prosecutors have charged a German-Syrian dual national with spying on exiled dissidents in Germany for Syria’s intelligence services.

The federal prosecutor’s office said Friday that it filed espionage charges at a Berlin court against the 37-year-old man, whom it identified only as Samer C. in line with German privacy rules.

Prosecutors allege that the suspect worked for Syrian intelligence from March 2011 to February 2012, snooping on Syrian dissidents living in Germany. They say that his main activity was taking photos of dissidents, and he passed the information to the military attache’s office at the Syrian Embassy in Berlin.

In a separate case, a Syrian man was convicted in December of spying on dissidents in Germany from 2009-2012 and sentenced to three years and three months in prison.