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The Russian Foreign Minister summoned the Norwegian ambassador to Moscow on Monday, three days after the arrest of a Russian national suspected of espionage in Oslo. At the same time, the security services swept the Norwegian parliament building (pictured above) in the capital for monitoring devices.
"We demanded … the immediate lifting of the absurd charges and his release," said the Moscow Foreign Ministry, giving the name of Mr. A. Bochkarev.
The Kremlin said that the arrest of this man was clearly a "wave of espionage in Russia" and promised that "such measures would result in consequences".
Bochkarev, 51, was in Oslo to attend a conference on strengthening cooperation between European parliaments. He was arrested Friday at Oslo Airport because of "suspicious behavior".
The lawyer for this man, Hege Aakre, told the NTB national news agency that his client was detained for two weeks before his trial and that he denied any wrongdoing. On Monday, he was questioned by the Norwegian National Security Service (PST).
The pretrial detention was ordered because the authorities feared that Bochkarev would destroy evidence.
Through the intermediary of his lawyer, Bochkarev said that he was the victim of a misunderstanding and that there was an innocent explanation to his behavior.
Parliament searched
A spokesman for the PST told the newspaper online Aldrimère it was necessary to search the parliament building for bugs about fears that the man had attempted to hack the cell phones of other conference participants. He did not specify if they had found something.
According to the Norwegian media, the man was a leading IT consultant for the Russian legislature. It was brought to the attention of the authorities by parliamentary officials who had noticed his strange behavior during the two-day conference.
Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who was in New York for a meeting of the UN General Assembly, said it was "a police affair", not a political affair.
es / kms (AP, dpa, Reuters)
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