A Canadian naval officer arrested this year for leaking secrets to an undisclosed foreign entity pleaded guilty on Wednesday to espionage, his lawyer said.
Jeffrey Delisle, 41, a naval intelligence officer, was charged in January with communicating over the past five years “with a foreign entity, information that the government of Canada is taking measures to safeguard.”
He made the guilty plea through his lawyer during a preliminary court hearing in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to charges of breach of trust and two counts of passing information to a foreign entity.
His lawyer told public broadcaster CBC that Delisle will be sentenced in January. He faces up to life in prison.
Media cannot report which country received the secret information as the court has ordered a publication ban.
Early reports pointed to Russia after Ottawa expelled four Russian diplomats in the aftermath of Delisle’s arrest, although Russia denied involvement.
Australian security sources reportedly said Delisle allegedly sold Moscow signals intelligence — information gathered by the interception of radio and radar signals — collected by the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
They said much of the information was more highly classified than the disclosures attributed to US Private Bradley Manning, who is accused of releasing a vast cache of classified files to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
Delisle’s offenses allegedly occurred in the Canadian capital Ottawa, Halifax and in towns in Ontario and Nova Scotia provinces, court documents said.
He is the first person charged since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States under Canada’s new Security of Information Act.
Canadian naval officer pleads guilty to spying
