A Turkish spy has been sentenced to probation at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court for secret service agent activities. As the court announced on Thursday, the senate imposed a suspended prison sentence of one year and nine months on Ali D. The court found the charges of secret service agent activity and unauthorised possession of weapons confirmed.

Ali D. was detained in a Düsseldorf hotel in mid-September and was arrested immediately afterwards after an employee had discovered a weapon on him. The police found 200 rounds of ammunition and information on opposition members of Turkish origin in the room.

Ali D. admitted to having started working for the intelligence department of the "Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Jandarması" (Turkish military police) a few weeks before his arrest. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office accused him of having started "following his Turkish nationalist convictions" by August 2018 at the latest to collect information in the Federal Republic on supporters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as well as the movement of the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen in order to forward it to Turkish intelligence services. "He answered specific enquiries of an employee about persons of Turkish origin living in Germany and collected information on this group of persons," the findings of the 7th State Protection Senate at the Higher Regional Court stated. In addition, he recruited an acquaintance as an informant.

Ali D. claimed that he overstretched himself financially by buying a hotel and therefore offered himself to two secret services. Among others, he allegedly denounced his girlfriend's ex-fiancé as a "PKK man". He said he felt safe with the deceptively real alarm pistol in his waistband and carried it with him only for that reason. The live ammunition, on the other hand, was not for his espionage activities; as a marksman, he needed it for his hobby. And he preferred to buy large quantities in stock rather than at the high prices at the shooting range, he argued.

The comprehensive confession of the accused, who had been in pre-trial detention for about three quarters of a year, was part of an agreement with the Senate, which in return promised a suspended sentence of 21 months. However, the sentence against Ali D. is not yet legally binding. Both the Attorney General's Office and the Turk himself could still apply for an appeal to the Federal Supreme Court.