Two high ranking public persons: former head of the Police Intelligence Service _and_ former head of the Defence Intelligence Service Lars Findsen and former Liberal Party minister of defence Claus Hjort Frederiksen, are both currently standing accused of high treason (_landsforræderi_, lit. “betrayal of the country”) because of them leaking information about joint Danish-American espionage operations.
It is the first time in 40 years Denmark is seeing a §109 of the penal code used. Lars Findsen was imprisoned in secrecy last month, but it was revealed last week, and Claus Hjort Frederiksen was accused today.
Lars Findsen was the first person to have headed both of the Danish intelligence service, and Claus Hjort Frederiksen was/is regarded as one of the most important and significant liberal figures in Danish politics. He is also infamous for using less-than-democratic methods, such as lying to parliament, asking the department of employment to administer rules illegally, fudging the numbers when it comes to employment, and destroying incriminating documents.
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The Swedish treason law (landsförräderi) only applies to acts committed when the country is at war. You cannot commit treason in peacetime. We’ve not been at war in a long time.
We have *Landesverrat* defined in [§ 94 StGB](https://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/94.html).
In 2015, [Markus R.](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_Markus_R.) was prosecuted under §94. He worked for the German intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst and sold secret files to the CIA. Apparently he also offered files to the SWR. He was caught, since he used his Gmail account and sentenced to 8 years. According to the press back in the day, he would not ace in an IQ test.
Also in 2015, two bloggers/journalitst of [Netzpolitik.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzpolitik.org#Treason_investigation_2015) were prosecuted by the federal general prosecutor under § 94. They published internal secret documents about the financing plan for the mass surveillance by the federal intelligence service Verfassungsschutz. It caused a huge uproar in the press, partly because the argument made by the prosecution that bloggers are not journalists and therefor not protected by the press laws. This was probably only done to scare and get the source of the leak. It turned into a political shit show until the federal minister of justice stepped in and sent the federal general prosecutor into his pension.
On a positive side note, we got some nice [Landesverräter-Shirts and merchandise out of that mess](https://www.ccc.de/system/uploads/191/headline/landesverrat.png?1438308823)
This case was pretty prominent in the press and also of historical interest, since both, the German Empire and the Weimar Republic had high profile cases of treason. The [Weltbühne Trial of 1931](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltb%C3%BChne_trial) was also about high treason. Carl von Ossietzky and Walter Kreiser where charged with high treason for reporting about the Schwarze Reichswehr and the illegal measures to circumvent the limitations of the Versaille treaty by building a Luftwaffe with Soviet support in the USSR. The Government found itself in a dilemma, since a trial would make those top secret military operations public, but they also wanted to intimidate journalists not to research and publish about what’s going on.
The prosecutor was involved in the trial against the murderers of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and manipulated evidence there, the judge also presided the Ulmer Reichswehrtrial against officers that conspired with the NSDAP and Hitler.
The first conviction for [treason](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.at/20201022/woman-jailed-for-12-years-for-trying-to-overthrow-austrian-government/%3Famp) in Austria since 1945 happend 2019. The president of a neo-nazi group made plans to overthrow the government and has even ask Putin for support. She got 12 years jailtime.
The first, and for now the only, person sentenced for treason since the establishment of the Spanish Constitution is from 2010.
A man working for the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (Spain’s secret service) obtained classified information and sold it to Russian intelligence services. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
https://www.legaltoday.com/practica-juridica/derecho-penal/penal/primera-condena-a-un-espia-espanol-por-el-delito-de-traicion-a-espana-2010-03-18/
Since the introduction of the current Dutch penal code in 1886, there has been no single act that is explicitly categorised as high treason (*hoogverraad*).
[Title I of the penal code (articles 92 to 107a)](https://wetten.overheid.nl/jci1.3:c:BWBR0001854&boek=Tweede&titeldeel=I&z=2022-01-01&g=2022-01-01) combines “crimes against the security of the state”. Some of those only apply in times of war, which obviously hasn’t been the case for a while now.
Article 98 section 1 is probably what (in my very much not expert opinion, IANAL) would be used for leaking state secrets:
>Any person who intentionally provides information, the secrecy of which is in the interest of the State or of its allies, or an object from which such information may be derived, to a person or body who is not authorised to inspect such information, shall be punished by imprisonment not exceeding six years or a fine of the fifth category, provided the person knows or should reasonably suspect that it concerns any such information or object.
From what I could find in the court databases, usage of it is pretty rare. The last conviction I could find was [this one from 2016](https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:GHDHA:2016:171), where a former analyst at the AIVD, the Dutch intelligence service, leaked information to the Telegraaf newspaper. He was sentenced to 8 months in prison, 4 of which on parole.
[William Joyce](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Joyce) (who broadcast under the name “Lord Haw Haw”) was the last, in 1945. He was originally an American who travelled to Germany and spent the war broadcasting on the radio spreading Nazi propaganda and trying to convince the British public to surrender.
It was pretty dubious that he was tried under treason laws, not being British, but he had claimed a British passport, which the prosecutor successfully argued was sufficient. He was found guilty and hanged.
Post 2000 none. The last was from 1977, a brigadier gave information to the Soviets. Before that, during the war from 1939-45 there were 468 cases of *Landesverrat*, 33 of which ended in execution, 372 in imprisonment.
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Like in Sweden, seemingly, in Finland treason (“maanpetos”, “betrayal of country”) is technically only possible during war.
In peacetime the most likely charge would be spying, there was a case in 2002, which concerned alleged spying for the DDR in the 1970s, but I think nothing came of it in the end, the state prosecutor never charged (It was quite complex, as I recall.)
Now recently (started three years ago?) there was and still is a case where the leading newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat, was charged for publishing military intelligence secrets. Little is known about the details of the case because of extreme gag orders, “national security”. Three journalists are being charged.
The most recent treason case is a case of a soldier called Emil Czeczko.
As you all know, we have a migration crisis on the border with Belarus, and Emil decided to desert from the army and run to Belarus.
Apparently, he had issues with the law, beat up his own mother, but it is absolutely unclear how could anyone send him to guard the border, considering his legal troubles.
Just a few months ago, the news of an Italian naval officer passing confidential information to the Russian secret services caused a sensation.
Treason can only happen in case of war and there were no military conflicts in Lithuania after 1991. However, Lithuania had post-Soviet inherited criminal code up to 2003 which had broader definition of treason, and the conspirators/Soviet collaborators of [1991 Soviet invasion/coup attempt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January%20Events) were imprisoned for that.
I had to google to find something and 2 years ago 2 former DGSE agents ( DGSE is our CIA, DGSI is our FBI, to illustrate ) were convicted of treason for China. One of them had a affair with the Chinese translator of the French embassy in Beijing 20 years ago and the other got caught with lot of cash on him after meeting a Chinese contact on an island in the Indian Sea. The article point out that the trial was purposefully not open to the public, that those are the only facts known and that the agents have been condemned for “intelligence with a foreign power”, “delivering datas to a foreign power” and “threats to the fundamentals interests of the nation”.
[Article in French](https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2020/07/10/deux-ex-agents-de-la-dgse-condamnes-pour-trahison-au-profit-de-la-chine_6045884_3224.html)
Alot of thief’s of all kind here, with no convictions because of corruption, incompetence, lack of will. If you are not a thief there is something mentally wrong with you. Why do you not want your secret off shore bank accounts to fill up, and your cousins to prosper. Psychiatrists agree.
There was a case of a colonel of the Austrian army who had spied for Russia. He only was discovered after he retired. Allegedly he had been spying for 30 years.