Belgian Court Extends NATO Spy Suspect's Detention as European Reporting Shows Canada Consented to an Investigation of the Intern It Had Cleared

Ottawa’s involvement consisted of granting Zhang the clearance that placed her inside allied command, and then, months after she drew suspicion, consenting to an investigation, reports say.

The suspected spy posted this photo of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau in 2014, at a gala event in Toronto.

BRUSSELS – A Belgian appeals court on Monday rejected the release appeal of Biwei Zhang, the Canadian intern accused of involvement in a criminal organization and of espionage inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military command. The Chamber of Indictments in Brussels extended her pre-trial detention by a month.

The ruling comes days after a European investigative consortium published the most detailed reporting yet on how the closely guarded case began, and on what Canada’s part in it was.

Ottawa is facing questions about why Zhang, a Canadian citizen and an immigrant from China, was cleared for a sensitive post at allied command after she was found to have committed fraud in an application to the Canada Border Services Agency, and about the government positions she held in the years that followed.

On August 5, Mark Carney told reporters that Canadian officials had been involved from the start, and invited them to draw their own conclusions.

That account is difficult to square with new reporting by the Paris intelligence-trade publication Intelligence Online, the Belgian outlet Le Soir and the Dutch investigative platform Follow the Money, which report that Belgian and allied investigators opened their broader inquiry into Zhang with the consent of Canadian authorities. The Bureau has not independently confirmed the consortium’s findings.

If the consortium’s account holds, Ottawa’s involvement consisted of granting Zhang the clearance that placed her inside allied command, and then, months after she drew suspicion, consenting to an investigation that Canada’s allies had initiated into the suspect that Canada had cleared.

According to the European reporting consortium, Zhang, an information technology specialist assigned to cyber command, first came to the attention of the Allied Command Counterintelligence service, based in Mons, in early 2026. The service produced an initial report on her in February, because she had been asking colleagues repeated questions about what would follow from breaches of security protocol.

The event that turned a counterintelligence file into a criminal investigation came on April 21, according to Intelligence Online’s reporting.

An alarm triggered the evacuation of buildings at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), and Zhang, the consortium reports, was caught loitering near the office of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, United States Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich — the post responsible for the alliance’s secret contingency plans and for the forces its 32 members would place under his command in the event of an attack by Russia.

Investigators observed suspicious activity that day in the access control system of the building where Grynkewich works.

Days later, Allied Command Counterintelligence and Belgium’s military intelligence agency, convened to discuss what had happened. It was at that point, according to the European reporting, that Ottawa’s agreement was obtained and a broader probe began.

Zhang was arrested by Belgian federal police on July 24 on suspicion of espionage on behalf of a third country and involvement in a criminal organization, charges carrying up to 15 years if proven. Her lawyer, Sven Mary, declined to comment to the consortium. Belgian authorities have not named the third country. Reuters, citing government sources, has identified it as China.

The consortium casts the affair as an embarrassment for Ottawa, which depends heavily on NATO for its defense. Allies who had noticed the intern's conduct are now questioning the process that put her inside allied command, and the case has caused unease at a headquarters built on mutual trust.

Events since the arrest have strengthened the suspicion that Zhang was not acting alone, the consortium reported. The student accommodation she occupied in Mons was broken into shortly after she was taken into custody, they said, and the small apartment was searched. Separately, while she sat in detention, passwords to several of her social media accounts were reportedly changed remotely.

The consortium also reports that Zhang arranged to be sent by the alliance to Poland in June. From the 8th to the 26th of that month, Poland hosted the Coalition Warrior Interoperability eXercise, which drew more than 4,000 military personnel, among them Vice Chief of Defence Staff François-Xavier Polderman, and which tests how the alliance’s command and control systems work together. At SHAPE she worked in proximity to the alliance’s newest platforms, including Palantir’s Maven software, and inside the command where NATO develops the military applications of artificial intelligence.

In 2019, Zhang committed identity fraud by filing two separate applications for work at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), a finding of the Public Service Commission upheld in a 2024 Federal Court decision that dismissed her application for judicial review — a matter The Bureau first reported. She afterward worked as an economist at Statistics Canada and then at the Canadian Space Agency.

As The Bureau has reported, a scan of Zhang’s social media profile shows she claimed to have worked on a Liberal Party election campaign, and in 2014 she posted photos of a gala fundraiser style event for then Liberal leader Justin Trudeau.