Turkish-born lawyer to become Germany’s first top intel official with migrant background, report says


A Turkish man born in Istanbul is expected to be appointed as the Vice President of Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), becoming the first person with a migrant background to hold a high-profile office in the country's intelligence services, a report said Friday.

It is still unclear when Sinan Selen will start his new job, German magazine Focus reported.

Selen, who studied law at the University of Cologne, has been involved with German security services institutions since 2000, when he started his career at the Federal Criminal Police Office.

He was the head investigator in the case of the 2006 German train bombing attempts.

Selen later joined the Interior Ministry as a specialist on counterterrorism measures for federal security agencies and was also involved in the multi-national development of the global counterterrorism strategy.

In 2009, the Istanbul-born man joined the Federal Police as deputy head of the crime-fighting department, where his main area of interest was cross-border crime and smuggling.

In 2011, he was appointed as the Head of Counterterrorism Task Force of the Interior Ministry, where he served for more than five years.

For the last two years, Selen has been serving as the Director of Security, Health and Safety at TUI Travel, Europe's biggest tour operator.

The report of Selen's potential appointment comes in the wake of the ouster of Hans-Georg Maassen as the head of the BfV over him showing sympathy for the far-right. Maassen caused some protracted wrangling in Germany's fragile coalition after he downplayed right-wing violence in a video of the protests in the eastern city of Chemnitz.