Norway arrests Chinese citizen for spying

PST. (Instagram/PST)

OSLO - Norway’s interior security service, PST, said Sunday a Chinese man had been arrested in the country’s north for spying, just weeks after a Chinese woman was arrested suspected of spying on satellite data.

The suspect was arrested on Friday by the Nordland police district, Eirik Veum, PST’s media spokesman, told AFP.

Veum said the man was suspected of “attempted illegal intelligence activities in Nordland”, but declined to provide further details on the nature of the activities.

On Sunday, a Norwegian court ordered that the suspect be remanded in custody for four weeks.

The man’s lawyer, Tor Haug, told news agency NTB that the man denied the offence.

On May 7, PST announced that Chinese woman, suspected of spying on Norwegian satellite data, had been arrested.

That arrest was “based on suspicions that a company registered in Norway is being used as a cover for an attempt by a Chinese state actor to establish a receiving station to download data from satellites in polar orbit,” Thomas Blom, police prosecutor at PST, told AFP at the time.

PST also said that other individuals were suspected in the case.

Norwegian intelligence services regularly single out China and Russia as the main risks to Norway when it comes to espionage.

In its latest threat assessment report, PST said that the two countries had shown interest in purchasing land near critical infrastructure or military installations.