GERMAN prosecutors yesterday charged the former East German spymaster Mr Markus Wolf with the kidnapping of one of his own officers more than 30 years ago.
They allege that Mr Wolf, who is now 73, ordered the abduction from Austria in 1962 of a former Stasi officer, Walter Thrane and his girlfriend, who had fled East Germany because the communist authorities disapproved of their liaison.
The couple were lured to a hideout and beaten unconscious before being spirited back to East Germany. Thrine spent 10 years in prison on his return and the woman was jailed for three years.
Prosecutors charged Mr Wolf, with two kidnappings in March after Germany's constitutional court last year overturned a six year jail sentence against him, ruling that his spying activities against West Germany were not treasonable because he was a citizen of another country at the time. They claim that Mr Wolf, who headed East Germany's foreign intelligence service, destroyed incriminating documents to cover his tracks.
Frequently cited as the model for the spy boss Karla in the novels of John Le Carre, Mr Wolf is a witty, urbane figure who has become a popular guest on German television chat shows. Born into a Jewish family, Mr Wolf fled Germany when Hitler came to power and became a committed communist during his teenage years of exile in Moscow.
He returned to East Germany after the second World War and created a new type of intelligence organisation, placing "moles" inside the West German government and using so called Romeo agents to extract secrets from Bonn secretaries.
His most spectacular success was revealed in 1974 when Willy Brandt was forced to resign as chancellor after one of his aides was exposed as an East German agent.
Despite the cold calculation he employed against his enemies, Mr Wolf was revered by the spies who worked for him and he in turn has vowed never to betray them. He left the intelligence service during the mid 1980s and joined pro democracy protesters in East Berlin shortly before the regime collapsed in 1989.
He remains a committed communist and expresses few regrets about his actions as intelligence chief.
