A pair of Czech developers working for Bohemia on Arma 3 has been arrested while taking photographs and recording video footage of a military base in the Greek island of Lemnos.
The developers, aged 28 and 33 have been accused of espionage, reports Greek newspaper News237, adding that they were found with footage and photographs of Greek military instalments.
Bohemia Interactive top dog Marek Spanel has since confirmed the incident on the company’s official forum.
“This is true,” Spanel said. “We prefer this topic not to be discussed on our forums at the moment, at least until we know more specific details about the case.”
Their defense so far has been to say they were collecting data for Arma 3, which is indeed based partly in Lemnos and touted to be as geographically accurate as possible.
A blog post on the Bohemia site named “Czeching out Lemnos” reads: “We try to avoid diverting too much from reality (still, our Limnos will not be an exact copy for many reasons),” and quite aptly: “let’s take a look at some interesting facts related to the ‘intelligence’ gathering.”
This isn’t the first time Greece has been a little sensitive to people taking photos of their military equipment. In 2001, Greek police arrested 14 plane-spotters spotting planes.
The plane-spotters were seen taking pictures of an aircraft after watching a display by the Greek Air Force. The group was charged with espionage and held for a total of six weeks.
They were released after posting a bail of five million drachmas ($12,800) each. The legal battle continued on with the Greek authorities until a final appeal a year later.
We’ll bring you the latest as the story develops.
Published: Sep 11, 2012 09:01 am