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Two retired French intelligence agents went on trial behind closed doors on Monday accused of having passed on secrets to a foreign power.
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The pair are accused of working for China, according to several media reports, with French officials at pains to avoid releasing details of the affair.
Pierre-Marie H. and Henri M. appeared in a special court accused of "delivering information to a foreign power" and "damaging the fundamental interests of the nation".
Both men worked for France's foreign intelligence service, the DGSE. They face 15 years in prison if convicted.
The men, now retired, were charged and detained in December 2017, although Pierre-Marie H. has since been released on bail.
His wife, Laurence H., also faces trial, accused of "concealment of property derived from intelligence with a foreign power likely to harm the fundamental interests of the nation".
The trial opened behind closed doors owing to the sensitive nature of the case, with the court made up exclusively of professional magistrates.
When the story was finally revealed in May 2018, French officials described it as an "extremely serious" case.
The then armed forces minister Florence Parly said that the two were suspected of having committed what could be described as "treasonous" acts that could have jeopardised national defence secrets.
It was the DGSE itself that detected the leak and presented its findings to prosecutors, said the defence ministry.
Affair with an interpreter
Officials have said little about the details of the case or even for which country they were allegedly working.
According to several media reports, however, the two men, colleagues at the DGSE in the 1990s, were working for China.
In 1997, Henri M. was appointed as the DGSE's man in Beijing, where he was the second secretary at the embassy. He was recalled early in 1998 after having had an affair with the ambassador's Chinese interpreter.
He retired a few years later and returned to China in 2003, where he married the former interpreter, setting up home on Hainan island in southern China.
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