Germany has dropped an investigation into the alleged tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone by the U.S. National Security Agency, citing a lack of evidence.
Harald Range, Germany’s chief federal prosecutor, officially closed the espionage investigation, which began last June in response to the disclosure from whistleblower Edward Snowden that the spy agency had had access to Merkel’s phone for years.
While documents leaked by Snowden were shown to support this case, the office of the federal prosecutor said that it could not prove that the document was “an authentic eavesdropping order from the NSA, or another U.S. intelligence agency.”
“It was possible to determine that the telephone number listed is assigned to a mobile telephone used by the chancellor,” Mr Range’s office said, but “the data on the document otherwise remain open to various interpretations.”
“The comments, which were viewed in public as a general admission of guilt, do not discharge us from (fulfilling) the burden of proof according to the requirements of criminal procedure,” the statement read.
When the initial allegations were made against the NSA, the White House stated that Merkel’s phone was not being bugged currently and would not be in future.