Two teenagers detained in the Netherlands on suspicion of spying for Russia
Authorities in the Netherlands have detained two teenage boys suspected of spying for Russian intelligence services, the English-language news site Dutch News reported on Friday.
Teenager spies in the Netherlands
According to Dutch police, the suspects carried out hacking tasks in The Hague, breaking into foreign computer systems. The 17-year-olds allegedly walked past the offices of Europol (the EU’s law enforcement cooperation agency), Eurojust (the EU agency responsible for judicial cooperation among member states), and the Canadian embassy in The Hague, carrying a device capable of connecting to nearby Wi-Fi networks, intercepting them, and saving transmitted data.
One of the teenagers was taken away from home
The father of one of the suspects claimed his son had been recruited by a pro-Russian hacker via the social media platform Telegram. He said that on Monday afternoon, eight masked men entered their apartment with a valid search warrant. They went straight into the room where his son was doing his homework and took him away, telling the family that the case concerned “espionage” and “services provided to a foreign country.”
The Dutch prosecution service (OM) declined to comment on the case due to the suspects’ young age but confirmed that one of the boys will remain in custody for another two weeks, while the other has been placed under house arrest with an electronic monitoring device. The arrests followed a tip-off from the Dutch intelligence service (AIVD), authorities said.
The case in unique in the country
Bart Schuurman, a professor at Leiden University who researches extremism and radicalisation, said the case is unique in the Netherlands. He noted that foreign powers often use so-called “disposable agents,” recruited anonymously through social media, which makes it difficult to trace those who issue the assignments.
Providing services to a foreign power can carry a prison sentence of up to eight years in the Netherlands, the news outlet added.
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