ISI hacked e-mails of German police in Afghanistan: Report

Islamabad, Oct 30: Pakistan's ISI systematically eavesdropped on the telephone communication and hacked into the e-mails of the German police mission in Afghanistan and passed on the highly confidential and militarily sensitive information to the Taliban, a media report said today.

The Pakistani intelligence service had advance information about German President Christian Wulff's visit to Afghanistan two weeks ago and conveyed it to the Taliban, even though the visit was kept a top secret by the authorities until he landed in Kabul, Bild newspaper reported.

Shortly before Wulff's visit, Germany's intelligence service BND had warned the Interior Ministry in Berlin that the ISI had penetrated the communication network of the German security forces in Afghanistan.

The BND has established that the ISI gained access to highly confidential information through a security gap in the communication systems of the German Police Project Team (GPPT), which has been training the Afghan police force since 2002 as part of Germany's involvement in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

A spokesman for the German Interior Ministry confirmed that it had received a warning from the BND on October 11, shortly before Wulff's visit, that a Pakistani intelligence service may be in possession of extracts from the e-mail communication between the German police force in Afghanistan and the Interior Ministry in Berlin, Bild said.

The information received by the BND on the ISI's espionage activities were "astonishingly concrete," it said.

PTI