Former BND chief Hanning arrested over 2,000 secret documents
German federal prosecutors had former Federal Intelligence Service (BND) president August Hanning arrested on Tuesday 6 October 2026. Officers of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) detained the 80 year old in the Steinfurt district of North Rhine-Westphalia. A second suspect, his former office manager Manfred D., was arrested in the Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district of Bavaria. Homes and offices were searched there and in Berlin.
The Federal Prosecutor General says Hanning is under strong suspicion of treasonous espionage, gathering state secrets, attempted treason and working as an agent for a foreign intelligence service. Manfred D. is accused of helping him. According to investigators, Manfred D. passed close to 2,000 documents to Hanning up to June 2022, many of them classified, including material prepared for the weekly intelligence briefing at the Chancellery. Investigators say Hanning used some of this material in one case to write an analysis for a member of a foreign security service, and that he exchanged political information with a member of another state intelligence service over several years. According to media reports, the contacts were not Russian services.
Hanning led the BND from 1998 to 2005 and then served as state secretary in the Federal Interior Ministry until 2009. The case started with a search of his home in September 2025 in a separate investigation by Hamburg prosecutors. The material found there was handed to federal prosecutors in May 2026. Reports say no former official this senior has ever been accused of treason in the history of the Federal Republic.
What happens next: both men are being brought before the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice on Tuesday 6 and Wednesday 7 October. The judge will read out the arrest warrants and decide whether they stay in custody. Hanning's lawyers have not commented on the accusations. Both men are presumed innocent until a court decides.