Denmark to charge ex-defence minister with leaking state secrets

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Denmark’s public prosecutor is set to formally charge former defence minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen with leaking highly classified state secrets, the justice ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Frederiksen, who served as defence minister between 2016 and 2019, said in January he had been preliminarily charged with violating a section of the penal code, which includes treason for leaking state secrets.

Parliament will now have to discuss whether to remove Frederiksen’s parliamentary immunity, a protection against legal prosecution granted to Danish lawmakers.

“I sincerely hope that the public and all members of the parliament can now gain insight into what it is that the government believes I have done, that can be viewed as treason,” Frederiksen told local news wire Ritzau.

The government has denied any involvement in the charges brought by the prosecutor.

Frederiksen and his lawyer did not immediately reply to requests for comment from Reuters. In a statement in January, Frederiksen said he “could never dream of doing anything that could harm Denmark or Denmark’s interests”.

The public prosecutor intends to charge Frederiksen, still a member of the Danish parliament, with the rarely used section 109 of the code, which carries a maximum sentence of 12 years in prison.

The precise charges have not been made public, but Frederiksen has suggested to local media they were based on public statements made by him about a secret surveillance agreement between Denmark and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

The head of Denmark’s foreign intelligence unit, Lars Findsen, has remained in custody since his arrest in December over his involvement in a case of “highly classified” information leaks.

The two cases have laid bare an intelligence scandal that has roiled the Nordic country, including the revelation of how the NSA used Danish data to spy on senior officials of neighbouring countries.

(Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky, Clarence Fernandez and Alex Richardson)