New Zealand court announces first-ever espionage conviction given to soldier

A New Zealand soldier who admitted attempting to spy for a foreign power has been sentenced to two years in military prison, followed by a discharge from the army.

The sentence, delivered by a judge and a panel of three senior military officers on August 20, came two days after the soldier pleaded guilty to three charges, including attempted espionage. According to AP reporting this marks the first-ever conviction for spying in New Zealand’s history.

The soldier’s identity remains suppressed, as does the name of the country he sought to provide information to.

According to military court documents, the man believed he was in contact with a foreign agent in 2019 when he attempted to share sensitive military details. These included base telephone directories, maps, assessments of security vulnerabilities, his identity card, and login credentials for a military network. The charges stated his actions were “likely to prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand.”

However, documents revealed the soldier was not speaking to a foreign operative but to an undercover New Zealand police officer gathering intelligence on suspected right-wing extremist groups.

Judge Kevin Riordan described the espionage attempt as unsophisticated, unlikely to cause harm, and naive, but emphasized its gravity.

“There is no such thing as a non-serious act of espionage,” Riordan said, according to Radio New Zealand. “There is no trivial act of espionage.”

The soldier first came to the attention of authorities during an investigation launched after the March 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, in which an Australian white supremacist killed 51 Muslim worshipers.

By Nazrin Sadigova