BERLIN
The U.S. has spied on Germany’s political leaders and senior officials since the 1990s, the WikiLeaks website claimed on Wednesday.
According to alleged classified documents released by WikiLeaks, the National Security Agency (NSA) targeted 125 telephones to intercept the conversations of German government figures.
“The names associated with some of the targets indicate that spying on the chancellery predates Angela Merkel as it includes staff of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his predecessor Helmut Kohl,” WikiLeaks said in a press release.
The list included the mobile phone Chancellor Angela Merkel used until 2013, her office phone and fax, as well as the office phones of state ministers and top bureaucrats at the prime ministry.
WikiLeaks also published top secret NSA reports from 2009 and 2011 based on intercepts of Merkel's calls, including discussions with aides and foreign leaders on the Greek debt crisis and Iran’s nuclear development.
"There is now proof enough of NSA surveillance on German soil,” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange said. “It is time to reopen the investigation and for the NSA to stop engaging in its illegal activities against Germany."
American whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 showed for the first time that Merkel’s private mobile phone had been on a NSA monitoring list.
Last year, Attorney General Harald Range opened an investigation into the claims but shelved the investigation last month.
A senior U.S. intelligence official left Germany in July last year at the request of the German government and Washington has refused to sign a “no-spy agreement” urged on it by Berlin.
