Russian convicted of spying in Germany, gets suspended term

BERLIN: A German court convicted a Russian man of espionage and gave him a one-year suspended sentence on Wednesday in a case in which he was accused of passing information about European rockets to Russian intelligence.The defendant, who has been identified only as Ilnur N. in line with German privacy rules, worked as a research assistant for a science and technology professor at the University of Augsburg until his arrest in June.The Munich state court found he had accepted that he was doing research for a Russian intelligence agency, German news agency dpa reported.Prosecutors have said that the Russian met regularly with a handler for the SVR foreign intelligence service and passed on information about aerospace research products, particularly the various development stages of the Ariane space launcher. He allegedly received a total of 2,500 euros ($2,700) in cash.When his trial opened in February, the 30-year-old told the court that he wasn't an agent. He said that he had given publicly accessible information to an employee of the Russian consulate in Munich, but knew nothing of the man's intelligence activities.He also said he hadn't been able to imagine that Russian intelligence was interested in material that was in any case publicly available.