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Ex-Chancellor’s wife’s office attacked

Unknown attackers broke the windows at the office of ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s wife Doris, for the second time, just five months before the state election in which she is standing.

Published: 14 August 2012 14:56 CEST

Ex-Chancellor's wife's office attacked

Photo: Facebook

Schröder-Köpf raised eyebrows in March when she beat a Social Democrat veteran for selection to stand for the party in a Hannover seat.

Since then her office windows have been broken with thrown stones twice.

“So far we don’t know if there is a connection between the two deeds, but we are investigating,” said a police spokesman.

An off-duty police officer noticed her office windows had been smashed at the beginning of August.

The 49-year-old former journalist posted about the attack on her Facebook page on Tuesday, just saying “stones at the constituency office again.”

Gerhard Schröder was German Chancellor for the Social Democrats from 1998 until 2005, during which time Schröder-Köpf was not particularly active politically.

But this spring she mounted the political stage in her own right, winning the Social Democrat nomination for the Hannover-Döhren seat in next January’s state election.

She and Schröder has been targeted by those campaigning for the jailed Russian punk band Pussy Riot, as they famously have a very close personal relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The Local/DPA/sh

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Aide to German far-right MEP arrested on suspicion of spying for China

The man, named only as Jian G., stands accused of sharing information about negotiations at European Parliament with a Chinese intelligence service and of spying on Chinese opposition figures in Germany, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

On the website of the European Parliament, Jian Guo is listed as an accredited assistant to MEP Maximilian Krah, the far-right AfD party’s lead candidate in the forthcoming EU-wide elections.

He is a German national who has reportedly worked as an aide to Krah in Brussels since 2019.

The suspect “is an employee of a Chinese secret service”, prosecutors said.

“In January 2024, the accused repeatedly passed on information about negotiations and decisions in the European Parliament to his intelligence service client.

“He also spied on Chinese opposition members in Germany for the intelligence service.”

The suspect was arrested in the eastern German city of Dresden on Monday and his homes were searched, they added.

The accused lives in both Dresden and Brussels, according to broadcasters ARD, RBB and SWR, who broke the news about the arrest.

The AfD said the allegations were “very disturbing”.

“As we have no further information on the case, we must wait for further investigations by federal prosecutors,” party spokesman Michael Pfalzgraf said in a statement.

The case is likely to fuel concern in the West about aggressive Chinese espionage.

It comes after Germany on Monday arrested three German nationals suspected of spying for China by providing access to secret maritime technology.

READ ALSO: Germany arrests three suspected of spying for China

China’s embassy in Berlin “firmly” rejected the allegations, according to Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua.

According to German media, the two cases are not connected.

In Britain on Monday, two men were charged with handing over “articles, notes, documents or information” to China between 2021 and last year.

Police named the men as Christopher Berry, 32, and Christoper Cash, 29, who previously worked at the UK parliament as a researcher.

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