Two teenagers detained in the Netherlands on suspicion of spying for Russia
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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.”