BERLIN – German police have arrested a pair of suspected foreign agents accused of operating as Russian spies since the days of the Cold War, prosecutors say.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office says the two were arrested after police raided their home in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Hesse state Tuesday.
Prosecutors said in a statement Friday they "are suspected of having worked in Germany over a long period of time for a foreign intelligence agency."
German news weekly Der Spiegel on Saturday reported that the pair -- a Russian couple allegedly spying in Germany since 1988 -- were arrested following a tip from the FBI who had uncovered a ring of Russian spies in the U.S. last year.
The woman was reportedly caught listening to coded messages, according to AFP.
The couple had German names and Austrian passports listing the man's birthplace as Argentina and the woman's as Peru, which had turned out to be false, according to a report.
The pair denied the accusations against them.
According to Der Spiegel, investigators believe the couple began spying in Germany for the former Soviet KGB and were now working for Russian foreign intelligence (SVR), though the exact nature of their activities was not clear, AFP reported.
Russia's SVR declined to comment on Der Spiegel's report.
"We will leave these reports without comments," SVR spokesman Sergei Ivanov told the Interfax news agency.
The Associated Press and AFP contributed to this report.
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