Afghan spying row rocks Germany

The BND chief is under pressure to discipline agents

Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, could face legal action over claims it spied on a German journalist and an Afghan minister.

German news magazine, Der Spiegel, said the BND had apologised to journalist Suzanne Koelbl for monitoring e-mails to the Afghan trade minister in 2006.

But the magazine says it is still considering legal action.

The minister, Amin Farhang, says the BND has endangered his life. The agency has not commented publicly on the case.

Mr Farhang told Germany's Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung daily: "This absurd lie that I was a kind of double agent has put my life and my family in great danger."

A German parliamentary committee investigating the affair condemned the fact that BND chief Ernst Uhrlau had not informed the government or the committee about the case. But it stopped short of calling for his resignation.

The BND is alleged to have installed Trojan spyware on the Afghan minister's computer hard disk in 2006.

The parliamentary committee, which met on Thursday, accused the BND of "a grave breach of basic rights" in its monitoring of the journalist, and said "the trust between the PKG (parliamentary committee) and the BND leadership has been undermined".