Germany demands Kosovo release BND agents - Summary
Berlin - Germany’s clandestine foreign-intelligence service BND confirmed Thursday that three men arrested in Kosovo are its agents, and Berlin parliamentary officials demanded their release. BND chief Ernst Uhrlau testified in secret to the parliamentary oversight committee on the secret services in Berlin.
A Kosovo judge earlier in the day accepted there was no evidence the trio had thrown a bomb at a European Union office in Pristina on November 14, but declined to free them.
Thomas Oppermann, the Berlin committee chairman, said the trio belong to the BND and had been detained in “inhumane conditions” for the past nine days by the ethnic Albanian authorities.
He said the reasons they were “taken prisoner” remained a “mystery.”
“There is no evidence whatever that the three Germans were involved in an attack,” he said.
The Pristina District Court decided on Thursday to hand over the case to an international judge, presiding judge Anton Nokaj told reporters.