It is a trial that has gripped Germany, with a wealthy heiress in the dock for months and a case that triggered the country’s biggest espionage scandal in recent history.
Christina Block, heir to a popular chain of steakhouses, is accused of ordering an Israeli security firm to carry out the violent abduction of her children from Denmark, following a bitter custody battle with her former husband.
There are allegedly connections with at least two former secret agents, from Germany and Israel.
In the latest twist, investigators in the case stumbled across evidence that has led to Germany’s former intelligence chief, August Hanning, being arrested this month for treason and espionage.
Hanning’s arrest stunned the intelligence community. Although his case has nothing to do with the Hamburg trial, he has denied allegations of involvement in an earlier attempted abduction of the children.
There was enormous media interest in Germany when Christina Block and six others went on trial in a high-security courtroom in Hamburg in July last year.
Block House restaurants, specialising in steak and baked potatoes, are a feature of many German towns. Their success over the past half century has helped make Christina Block’s father Eugen a multimillionaire.
Prosecutors allege that she and a family lawyer, Andreas Costard, organised the forcible abduction of two of her children, who were staying with her former husband, Stephan Hensel, at his home in Denmark.
They say the operation was carried out by a 36-year-old Israeli citizen named only as Jonathan G and five others.
The abduction took place during the New Year celebrations of 2023-24, as the two children and their father were watching a firework display, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors say several men ambushed and beat up Stephan Hensel, and dragged the boy and the girl, then 10 and 13 years old, into a car.
On the approach to the border with Germany, they are alleged to have changed vehicles, taped up the children’s mouths and tied the girl’s hands.
The group are then said to have travelled on to Baden-Württemberg in a campervan. Prosecutors say the children were held there against their will until their mother arrived to pick them up on 2 January 2024 and took them to her home in Hamburg.
