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The Canadian intern charged with espionage at NATO headquarters in Belgium was found in April near the office of the alliance’s supreme commander after a fire alarm was pulled by a suspected accomplice, a Belgian source familiar with the case told The Globe and Mail.
The intern’s unexpected appearance there triggered an investigation into her activities by the counterintelligence service of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, known as SHAPE.
It reported its concerns to Belgian military intelligence. In July, she was arrested by Belgian police and faces espionage charges on suspicion of spying for a third country.
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Biwei Zhang (also known as Claire Zhang) is a former Canadian federal public servant who took an internship at SHAPE in Mons, Belgium, last year.
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On April 21 this year, the intern, an IT specialist, was found near the building of U.S. General Alexus Grynkewich, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, as an evacuation of SHAPE’s personnel took place after the triggering of a fire alarm.
Ms. Zhang, a naturalized Canadian of Chinese origin, had already come to the attention of SHAPE’s counterintelligence service after asking colleagues questions about the consequences of security protocol breaches.
The Belgian source told The Globe on Friday that the investigation into Ms. Zhang, who is in pretrial detention in Belgium, is probing whether she was aided by accomplices both inside and outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
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The fire alarm is believed by investigators to have been triggered by someone other than Ms. Zhang, but they have not been identified, the source said. And on the day that it was triggered, according to the source, there was some suspicious activity in the access-control system of the building where the supreme NATO commander works.
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[The source, who spoke under the condition of anonymity] said that after she was arrested and incarcerated, a number of passwords to her social-media accounts were remotely changed. Her apartment in Mons was also broken into while she was behind bars, the source said, sparking questions about whether material that could relate to her case was being searched for.
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A Belgian judge on Monday denied her appeal for release from prison. The Chamber of Indictments decided to extend her pretrial detention by a month.
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The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is working with Belgian authorities on the case.
In a statement, CSIS spokesperson Eric Balsam said, “as the Prime Minister has shared, we are directly supporting our Belgian counterparts in support of the ongoing legal process in Brussels.”
Some of those involved in the investigation were surprised, according to the source, that Ms. Zhang was given security clearance by the Canadian government before starting her internship at NATO headquarters in Mons, near the French border. They said her background would likely have raised a number of red flags with security experts in Belgium.
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In Canada’s Parliament last month, the Commons public safety and national security committee launched an inquiry into vetting of public officials, after MPs expressed concern about how Ms. Zhang was cleared by Ottawa to work at NATO headquarters.
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She had previously held a number of federal jobs including at Statistics Canada and the Canadian Space Agency.
But in 2023, Ms. Zhang was found to have committed fraud within the federal civil service when she wrote the same job exam twice for a single posting at the Canada Border Services Agency, applying under slightly different names and separate e-mail addresses.
The public-service watchdog, which investigated her conduct, ruled that if she joined the federal public service within a year, she would have to complete an ethics course.
Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa and advisory-board member of the China Strategic Risks Institute, said it is possible that Ms. Zhang, who had “been in numerous and increasingly responsible positions already, did not get the screening depth that she might otherwise have had.”
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Since Mark Carney took office, she added in an e-mail, Canada’s security agencies “have been spread thin with budget cuts and many demands to screen new employees into sensitive positions in the PM’s and ministers’ offices as well as staff of newly created agencies.”
Western media? United States, Russia, and China have been pushing for this ecosystem, especially China of late, including their media.
Edit:
The Chinese party-state officially published its first official Arctic policy -framed as the "Polar Silk Road" as part of the Belt and Road Initiative - in 2018 when it declared itself a "near-Arctic state."
Many analysts have also noted the development of People's Liberation Army (PLA) capabilities that could extend to the Arctic.
Concerns by scientists and environmental groups who say using the Arctic passage will have a devastating impact on the fragile Arctic environment has frequently been denied or ignored by China.