The furore over US surveillance of overseas phone and internet traffic intensified over the weekend with allegations the US had monitored Angela Merkel’s mobile for more than a decade as Germany’s interior minister called for “those responsible” to be held to account.
According to leaked documents seen by weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, US intelligence intercepted the German chancellor’s phone from 2002, before she became chancellor, until shortly before a visit by US President Barack Obama to Berlin in June this year.
The documents also reveal the surveillance was carried out by one of a network of secret US mobile phone listening stations that extends around the world, with manned posts, often in embassies, in European cities including Berlin, Frankfurt, Rome, Milan, Paris, Geneva and Madrid.