German prosecutors on Wednesday laid charges against a suspected Vietnamese agent over last year’s cold war-style kidnapping of a fugitive state company official in Berlin which has badly strained bilateral ties. The 47-year-old man – identified only as Long N.H. in keeping with German privacy rules in judicial cases – was charged with working for a foreign intelligence service and aiding in an abduction. State company executive Trinh Xuan Thanh, who was in Germany seeking asylum, was snatched last July 23, 2017 while walking in Berlin’s central Tiergarten park and reappeared days later, in police captivity, on Vietnamese state television. Vietnam has insisted he voluntarily turned himself in. On January, a court in Vietnam sentenced the former oil executive to life in prison for embezzlement and economic mismanagement.