Germans, Swiss Detain 11 as Spies for KGB

Authorities in West Germany and Switzerland detained 11 people suspected of passing industrial and government secrets to the Soviet KGB, dealing a major blow to the intelligence agency, Federal Prosecutor Kurt Rebmann said today.

Four were released but remain under investigation.

Rebmann said West German security forces last Wednesday and Thursday carried out 33 investigations and picked up 10 suspected KGB spies.

In Switzerland, officials arrested another suspected Soviet spy on Wednesday at West Germany’s request, Rebmann said.

Information from the manhunt and interrogations could lead to more arrests, the prosecutor told a news conference.

“This was a powerful attack on the KGB spy network in the Federal Republic,” Rebmann said. “It was the biggest blow to it--at least as far as the number of exposed spies goes--since the establishment of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.”

Rebmann said officials believe the suspects supplied technological and industrial secrets and information on German politics and government civil servants to the KGB.

He said five of the 10 arrested in Germany had emigrated from the Soviet Union. Four were ethnic Germans who moved to West Germany on KGB instructions, he said. Another had emigrated to Israel, became a citizen and then moved to Germany, Rebmann said.

Cites Need for Checks

He said the number of immigrants among the suspects indicates a need for special security checks among immigrants from the East Bloc.

Two of the four suspects released are doctors, but Rebman said all are still under suspicion and are being investigated.

Those still jailed include a West German businessman, two West German engineers, a Colombian engineer and two West German teachers at the government’s foreign language school, Rebmann said.

In Bonn, government spokesman Norbert Schaefer told reporters the disclosure of Soviet espionage would not interfere with plans for an exchange of visits by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev later this year.