German authorities announced that they had foiled a planned attack against the Israeli embassy in Berlin, the suspect of which, a Libyan suspected of links with the Islamic State (IS) organization, will be presented to a judge on Sunday.
The suspect, identified by the courts as Omar A., is accused of having planned an “attack with high media impact using firearms” against the Israeli representation in the German capital, the federal prosecutor’s office said on Sunday in a press release, after announcing the arrest of this man on Saturday evening.
The Libyan, aged 28 according to the press, was arrested at his home in Bernau, a commune neighboring Berlin, during a major police operation involving special forces.
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“Our security services struck in time to thwart possible plans to attack the Israeli embassy in Berlin,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.
Omar A. is suspected of being “a supporter of IS ideology”, according to the prosecution, and had “exchanges with an IS member on an instant messaging service” to prepare his attack.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser during a meeting of European Interior Ministers and representatives of Western Balkan states on September 17, 2024 in Berlin, Germany. (Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP)
According to the tabloid Bildthe German authorities were alerted thanks to information from foreign intelligence services.
“High threat”
The Minister of the Interior underlined on Sunday “the high threat of Islamist, anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli violence”.
Israel’s ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, thanked the German authorities “for ensuring the security of our embassy” in a message posted Saturday evening on the social network X.
German police officers stand guard in front of the Kahal Adass Jisroel community housing complex, which houses a synagogue, kindergarten and community center, in central Berlin, Germany, October 18, 2023. (AP/Markus Schreiber)
Since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, German authorities have increased their vigilance in the face of the Islamist threat and the resurgence of anti-Semitism, as well as many countries in the world.
At the beginning of October, attacks targeted the Israeli embassies in Copenhagen and Stockholm. An official from the Swedish intelligence services (Säpo) then indicated that the involvement of Iran was a “hypothesis”.
At the beginning of September, German police killed a young Austrian known for his links to radical Islam as he prepared to carry out an attack against the Israeli consulate general in Munich.
Immigration debate
As part of the investigation, a second apartment was searched on Saturday in the North Rhine-Westphalia region (in the west of the country), the public prosecutor’s office said. According to the press, it is that of an uncle of the suspect with whom he wanted to hide after the attack, before leaving German territory.
The suspect will be presented before a judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe on Sunday.
According to Bild, the Libyan arrived in Germany in November 2022 and submitted an asylum application which was rejected on September 28, 2023.
The absence of expulsion proceedings against this man risks relaunching an explosive debate in Germany on the implementation of decisions to remove illegal migrants.
Illustration – A cyclist passes a police car in Berlin, Germany, September 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
Olaf Scholz’s government has recently taken a series of measures to tighten immigration control, one of the key commitments being the acceleration of expulsions of those rejected from asylum.
An important section of measures in this direction was adopted on Friday by German deputies, while the chancellor is under pressure with the rise of the far right in Germany, as elsewhere in Europe.
Several deadly attacks have shocked Germany in recent months: at the end of August, a knife attack committed by a Syrian and claimed by the jihadist organization Islamic State left three people dead and several injured during a party in Solingen (in the west of the country).
In June, another knife attack, attributed to an Afghan during an anti-Islam rally in Mannheim, left one dead, a police officer who had intervened.
More than 3,200 crimes with anti-Semitic motivation were recorded in Germany by the police from the start of the year until the beginning of October, approximately double the same period of the previous year.
