A civilian employee of a NATO airbase in western Germany has been arrested on charges of illegally gathering information with state secrets, the German Prosecutor General’s Office said on its website on Tuesday.
The 60-year-old employee of the Ramstein Air Base is believed to have illegally obtained and copied the classified information to his computer.
Prosecutors believe he intended to hand the information over to a third party. The report did not say who the third party might have been.
The man was detained on Monday, the report said.
The Ramstein Air Base, located in the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz, is the headquarters of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) and one of NATO’s two air command headquarters. The other one is located in Izmir, Turkey.
In February, NATO officials announced plans to turn the Ramstein base into a command and control hub for the alliance’s European missile defense forces.
