It is a saga that sounds like a John le Carré spy thriller, but played out at the top end of Danish politics.
The former defence secretary, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, is emotional as he recalls when his ordeal started.
“I parked my car in front of my house, and as I turned off the engine, two police officers jumped out of their car, came up to me and informed me that I was being charged with a very serious crime that could lead to 12 years in prison”.
It was December of 2021. Frederiksen, defence secretary from 2016 to 2019, was still an MP but now in opposition.
“It felt like the carpet was being pulled under my feet. I really didn’t know what to do. My wife, who was inside our house has Alzheimer’s, and I couldn’t really talk to her about it,” says 76-year-old Frederiksen.
On that day, Danish Police arrested four individuals in total, starting a legal drama that would put Denmark in an unwanted spotlight worldwide.
At the Defence Intelligence Headquarters in Copenhagen, a civil servant was led out of the office in handcuffs in front of colleagues. At Copenhagen Airport, events got even more tense.
“As I was walking through customs returning from a trip to Northern Macedonia having helped with security sector reforms, two police officers came up to me and asked me to follow them into the adjourning room. Here lots of Police were waiting. I was informed that I was under arrest and told that I would learn more later,” says Lars Findsen, the former Chief of Danish Defence Intelligence Services (DDIS), which is overseen by the defence minister.
Findsen, a Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog for his contribution to Danish life who served in the Secret Service world for more than twenty years, was taken to a police station north of Copenhagen escorted by armed officers.
The charges that Frederiksen and Findsen would eventually find themselves facing? The leaking of state secrets, amounting to treason.
“I got hold of my lawyer, and we were presented with their material against me. We were shocked, this was plainly insane,” Mr Findsen says. “The Danish Security Service (DSIS) had been in charge of the investigation, and they now hinted that if I would confess now and at the same time give them the names of sources used by the press in their service, they would look kindlier on my case.
I was the chief of the other secret service branch DDIS, which is our foreign intelligence service and apart from the absurdity of the charges against me, I was not familiar with the sources in the security branch used by the press. There had been a range of leaks that had apparently been politically inconvenient to the then government” says Findsen.
Today, we know that the charges were about disclosing information about data collection from a cable-sharing partnership between the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Denmark. However, this deal has been public knowledge since Edward Snowden revealed thousands of classified NSA documents in 2013. The Danish press has covered the secret cable-sharing extensively for years.
Findsen was jailed. His home was searched. The computers and telephones belonging to him, his wife and his children were confiscated.
“I was treated as if I was dangerous. There would always be an officer present at the prison when I spoke to other people; even going to the bathroom at the police station, I had to do it with an open door,” Findsen says.
Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard
From the information Findsen got through the interrogations he faced, it became clear that he had been under surveillance for a long time. His home and summer house had been bugged.
“An operation of this scale is no small matter. Permission to carry it out would have had to come from very high up. After all, we had a scenario where the chief of one secret service branch [the domestic one] was bugging the chief of the other branch.
This accusation has been refuted current Danish Defence Secretary, Peter Hummelgaard, who said in a statement to The Independent: “Denmark is a state governed by the rule of law, where the Prosecution Service is subject to a statutory principle of objectivity, which in Denmark is a fundamental principle in criminal justice. This is considered one of the most important guarantees for the processing of criminal cases, and a similar principle applies to the police”.
Findsen was imprisoned for 70 days by a Town Court judge until the High Court ordered his release. But the charges against him remained. The former Spy Chief was accused of conveying top-secret information partly in conversations with two senior journalists, partly in conversations in his home with his close family, including his 86-year-old mother and in a private conversation with an old colleague, the former national commissioner of police, something Findsen has always denied.
We were shocked, this was plainly insane
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen
