The AfD leak: an MP's letter to Assad's UN envoy — edition 4

Edition 4 · 4 November 2026 · Preliminary — research in progress. Editions 1, 2 and 3 stay online unchanged. This edition checks a story that ZDF published on 29 October 2026: AfD MP Markus Frohnmaier’s contacts with the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad in 2018 and the restricted papers his office sent to his private email address. It reports what the leaked files show. The archive covers only 11 mailboxes, so it is a partial record.

In short#

• Frohnmaier wrote to Syria’s UN ambassador that his office was collecting information on a German aid programme. On 20 July 2018, days after a meeting in New York, his office sent a letter “on behalf of Mr Frohnmaier” to the Syrian mission. In it he thanks “Your Excellency” for the meeting and writes: “The staff of my office are currently collecting all the information about the Cash for Work program”. Cash for Work is a German government programme that pays Syrian refugees and displaced people for work.
• His office commissioned a Bundestag research paper and wanted it translated into Arabic for the Syrian envoy. A staff member wrote that he had ordered it “because we wanted to send the Syrian representative at the United Nations something on Cash for Work”.
• Four months later Frohnmaier asked the government 17 questions about the programme: where in Syria it operates, how the cash gets there and is paid out, and whether members of the Syrian opposition can take part. The government answered in public: in opposition-held parts of Idlib, Hama and Aleppo, with wages paid monthly in cash, in person.
• The office handled restricted papers loosely. After a “state secret” reached the office in connection with a Syria question in early 2018, the handling rules for restricted papers were sent to a staff member’s private Gmail address. Between January 2018 and April 2019 at least 43 Bundestag committee papers went to Frohnmaier’s private AOL address, including Defence Ministry reports on the Bundeswehr’s missions abroad.
• He planned to bring a staff member later described as an Assad supporter to a meeting with a Syrian delegation. In October 2018 Frohnmaier asked to attend a ministry meeting with a delegation from Syria together with his staff member Kevork Almassian, then cancelled. In 2020 t-online described Almassian as an “Assad supporter in the service of the AfD”.

What we examined#

The archive was published by the hacker group “Hexane” in October 2026: 421,180 emails and 48,572 attached documents from 11 AfD mailboxes, 2013–2026. The AfD has confirmed the attack but not the authenticity of individual emails, and forged “AfD leak” emails are reported to circulate — so every claim cites the original file and its hash. The Frohnmaier office emails survive as copies in the mailbox of the AfD’s federal arbitration court, one of the 11 leaked mailboxes.

How the research works: automated steps run on open-weight models. For this edition, 491 emails were read by a model: every Frohnmaier-office email about Syria, “Cash for Work”, the July 2018 UN forum or classified-material rules, and the emails to his private AOL address that carry committee papers or deal with Russia and Ukraine. The model extracted who wrote what to whom, which papers were attached and how they were marked. Every quote was checked to occur word for word in the source. Sender, recipients and dates come from the email headers. A person — or Claude as editor — reads only the extracted findings, not the mail bodies. Public Bundestag papers and press reports are linked where they are cited.

1. Frohnmaier, Syria and “Cash for Work” (2018)#

The background#

In 2018 the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was internationally isolated because of its conduct in the civil war. Germany had suspended its development cooperation with Syria, as the federal government confirmed in January 2019. Its “Beschäftigungsoffensive Nahost: Cash for Work” (“Middle East employment drive”) paid Syrian refugees, displaced people and local residents in Syria and neighbouring countries for work, from teaching to health care. Markus Frohnmaier, AfD MP since 2017, sat on the Bundestag’s committee for economic cooperation and development, which oversees the programme.

Early 2018: a “state secret” and the handling rules#

Frohnmaier’s first parliamentary question on Syria, about “the foreseeable end of the Syrian civil war”, was filed in November 2017 and answered in early January 2018. 1 2 In late January a staff member asked for the leaflet on restricted papers (“VS – Nur für den Dienstgebrauch”, the lowest German classification level) because, he wrote, “in connection with my Syria question a state secret was sent to us”. The leaflet was sent from Frohnmaier’s Bundestag address to the staff member’s private Gmail address. 3

In April 2018 the Russian state broadcaster RT International arranged a live interview on Syria with Frohnmaier in its Berlin studio; afterwards his office thanked RT for “the link to the interview”. RT’s request was “to discuss the situation around Syrian Douma, how Germany should respond”, days after the reported chemical attack there. 4 5

July 2018: New York, the letter and the research paper#

On 15 July 2018 Frohnmaier, as part of the German delegation to a UN forum on sustainable development in New York, met Syria’s then UN ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari, ZDF reported. Frohnmaier has confirmed one meeting.

• 19 July: his office commissioned the Bundestag’s research service (Wissenschaftliche Dienste) to write a paper on Cash for Work. The paper that came back is titled “German Cash-for-Work programmes for Syrian refugees in the Middle East” (WD 2 - 3000 - 100/18). 6
• 20 July: Frohnmaier’s letter, addressed “Your Excellency”, thanks the recipient “for the opportunity to meet you in New York” and says: “The staff of my office are currently collecting all the information about the Cash for Work program”. 7 The same morning his personal assistant sent the letter from Frohnmaier’s Bundestag address to the email address of the Syrian mission, “on behalf of Mr Frohnmaier, Member of the German Bundestag”. 8 The archive holds this one email to that address.
• 6 August – 5 September: a staff member asked for the research paper to be translated into Arabic by the Bundestag’s language service, “and then, as soon as it is available, to send it to the representative”. The request was passed to Frohnmaier for signature. The staff member explained to a colleague that he had commissioned the paper “because we wanted to send the Syrian representative at the United Nations something on Cash for Work”. 6 9 10 11 These emails also went to Frohnmaier’s private AOL address.

October–November 2018: the Syrian delegation and the 17 questions#

In October 2018 the development ministry invited MPs to meet a delegation from Syria. Frohnmaier’s office replied that he “would like to attend the talk with the delegation from Syria together with his staff member Kevork Almassian” on 18 October. 12 He later cancelled because of a speech in the plenary. 13 Almassian, a Syrian refugee, worked on social media for Frohnmaier. t-online described him in 2020 as an “Assad-Unterstützer in Diensten der AfD” (Assad supporter in the service of the AfD) and quoted a lawyer who said he had made clear that he is pro-Assad. Almassian says he only wants to counter propaganda.

On 31 October 2018 Frohnmaier and the AfD group signed a parliamentary question with 17 questions on Cash for Work, published on 12 November (Drucksache 19/5694). Among them: in which regions of Syria the programme operates, “how the transport and payment of the funds into the Syrian regions” works, whether members or sympathisers of the Syrian opposition coalition can take part, and whether the programme is coordinated with the government of President Assad. The government answered publicly on 9 January 2019 (Drucksache 19/6938): in Syria the programme pays health workers in the opposition-held parts of Idlib, Hama and Aleppo, and works with the UN Development Programme in the provinces of Damascus, Homs, Aleppo, Hama, Al-Hasakeh and Daraa. Wages are paid “monthly in cash, exclusively in person”. The programme “is not coordinated with the Syrian government”. ZDF notes that such information could have interested Damascus.

On 26 October, days before the question was signed, Frohnmaier’s assistant had sent him the protocol of a meeting of the development committee at which Cash for Work was discussed, marked “nur für den Dienstgebrauch” (for official use only), to his private AOL address. 14 A separate question by Frohnmaier on the return of Syrian refugees (Drucksache 19/4967) was answered in late October 2018. The office forwarded the advance answer on 29 October, among others to Manuel Ochsenreiter’s private Gmail address (see edition 3), the day before it was published as Drucksache 19/5393. 15

What Frohnmaier says#

Through his lawyer, Frohnmaier told ZDF that the meeting in New York was about “the political situation in Syria”, among other things, and that the parliamentary question was meant to obtain “information about this programme for his own political work”. “He neither passed classified information to unauthorised persons nor collected information for foreign states” (ZDF). ZDF writes that a handover to Syrian representatives does not emerge from the hacked correspondence, which the leak contains only in fragments.

2. Restricted papers on the MP’s private address#

Frohnmaier’s private AOL address received 2,859 emails in the archive, from 2015 to April 2019. Between January 2018 and April 2019 his office forwarded at least 43 emails with Bundestag committee papers (Ausschussdrucksachen) or Defence Ministry reports to it, judging by their subject lines. 16 17 18 Among them are at least nine reports of the Defence Ministry to parliament, several of them titled as reports on the Bundeswehr’s missions abroad. ZDF describes these as weekly briefings on the security situation in foreign deployments. Papers marked as restricted in the emails include an EU foresight paper, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly conference papers (Berlin, July 2018, and Vienna, February 2019), committee minutes, and the EU Foreign Affairs Council reports described in edition 3. 19 20 21 22 23 Frohnmaier’s lawyer told ZDF that “all incoming mail was forwarded to this account across the board”, that unauthorised persons had no access, and that the practice “has not been carried out for some time” (ZDF). The Bundestag administration told ZDF that such material may be handled only on approved official IT.

Russia in the forwarded mail. Among the emails to the AOL address with Russia connections:

• Skripal, April 2018: a few weeks after the nerve-agent attack on the former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in England, draft written questions to the federal government, “all relating to the Skripal case”, were forwarded from Frohnmaier’s Bundestag address to the private one. The drafts were to be checked for “whether the federal government could evade them without a substantive answer”, for example “by referring to secrecy rules”. 24
• Nord Stream 2, April 2018: OSCE Parliamentary Assembly material on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. 25

Overlap with the Ochsenreiter mailbox. Of the 43 committee-paper emails, 24 also went to the office’s staff mailbox “ma03”. Seven of these arrived while Manuel Ochsenreiter was using that mailbox (October–November 2018), among them a Defence Ministry report on the Bundeswehr’s missions abroad and the restricted EU Foreign Affairs Council reports. 18 23

3. Frohnmaier and Russia today#

According to ZDF, Frohnmaier, still an AfD MP, addressed a post to Kirill Dmitriev, President Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation: “I am very much looking forward to the trilateral economic forum. Preparations are already under way.” ZDF reports that he plans to travel to Russia again in the spring.

Earlier editions describe AfD trips to occupied Crimea and Russia in 2018 and his office’s employment of Manuel Ochsenreiter (edition 1, edition 3).

How to verify#

Every reference [n] points to a file in the published archive. The afd:// address gives the mailbox and the mbox file (or document); the SHA-256 is the hash of the raw message and identifies it uniquely. Message-IDs and private email addresses are left out.

• sha256 ok means the file is unchanged since we indexed it — not that the email is genuine.
• DKIM pass means the sender’s server signed the message and the signature still verifies today — strong evidence of authenticity. Most cited emails are internal Bundestag or AfD mail without a signature; their display names and dates come from unsigned headers.

The Bundestag papers 19/5694, 19/6938, 19/4967 and 19/5393 are public and can be checked directly. Quotes from the emails are translated from German, except the English-language letter and RT’s request, which are quoted as written.

Press sources#

• ZDFheute / ZDF frontal, 29 Oct 2026 — AfD-Leaks: Sammelte Abgeordneter Infos für das Assad-Regime?
• Deutscher Bundestag, 12 Nov 2018 — Kleine Anfrage 19/5694, Programm „Beschäftigungsoffensive Nahost: Cash for Work“
• Deutscher Bundestag, 9 Jan 2019 — Antwort der Bundesregierung, Drucksache 19/6938
• Deutscher Bundestag, Oct 2018 — Kleine Anfrage 19/4967, Rückkehr syrischer Flüchtlinge in ihre Heimat
• Deutscher Bundestag, 30 Oct 2018 — Antwort der Bundesregierung 19/5393, Rückkehr syrischer Flüchtlinge in ihre Heimat
• t-online, 25 Nov 2020 — Kevork Almassian: Syrer fordern Überprüfung von AfD-Flüchtling

Evidence index#