AfD leak: Emails raise questions about Frohnmaier's contacts with Assad regime
According to ZDF, staff forwarded restricted documents to Frohnmaier's private address, and in 2018 he met Syria's UN ambassador. The emails do not prove any disclosure; Frohnmaier denies the allegations.
Symbolic image · Photo: Jörg Braukmann / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Leaked AfD emails raise questions about how AfD lawmaker Markus Frohnmaier handled confidential information, according to research by public broadcaster ZDF. Staff members in 2018 regularly forwarded documents classified "restricted – for official use only" to his private AOL address, including Defense Ministry briefings on Bundeswehr deployments abroad. According to the Bundestag administration, only approved, officially managed equipment may be used for this; a violation could be a criminal matter. Frohnmaier is deputy leader of the AfD parliamentary group and has been its foreign policy spokesman since mid-2025.
According to the emails, Frohnmaier met Syria's then UN ambassador, Bashar al-Jaafari, in New York on July 15, 2018. A few days later he wrote to the Syrian UN mission that his staff were gathering information on the "Cash for Work" program that he would send; in November 2018 he followed up with a parliamentary question containing 17 questions about the program. ZDF said the fragmentary correspondence does not show whether any information was actually passed on.
Through his lawyer, Frohnmaier acknowledged that office staff had forwarded incoming mail wholesale to his private account, but said no unauthorized person had access and the practice has ended. He confirmed a single meeting with the ambassador at which he said no secrets were disclosed, and denied gathering information for foreign states or receiving anything in return. The AfD reported a hacking attack in September; after the emails were published, it pledged to clarify "fully" how the leak came about.