Almost five years after the kidnapping of a Vietnamese businessman from Berlin, a man suspected of being involved is in custody. According to information from Thursday, the federal prosecutor’s office accuses him of acting as a secret service agent and of aiding and abetting the deprivation of liberty.

He is said to have spied on the victim and steered one of the vehicles in the action. The Vietnamese was arrested in the Czech capital of Prague in mid-April and extradited to Germany on Wednesday, the authorities in Karlsruhe announced.

The businessman Trinh Xuan Thanh was attacked in the federal capital on July 23, 2017 and dragged into a van along with his girlfriend. In Vietnam, he was twice sentenced to life imprisonment on corruption charges.

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The Berlin Court of Appeal assumed that the Vietnamese secret service was behind it. A Vietnamese from Prague had confessed to renting the van and taking it to Berlin and back.

In July 2018, he was sentenced to three years and ten months in prison for acting as a secret service agent and aiding and abetting the deprivation of liberty. The Federal Court of Justice has since confirmed the verdict.

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