German authorities announced that they had thwarted a planned attack against the Israeli embassy in Berlin, whose suspect, a Libyan suspected of having links to the Daesh organization, will be presented this Sunday, October 20, before a judge.
The suspect, identified by the courts as Omar A., is accused of having planned a “high-media attack with firearms” against the Israeli representation in the German capital, the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Sunday. after announcing the arrest of this man on Saturday night.
The Libyan, 28 years old according to the press, was arrested at his home in Bernau, a municipality neighboring Berlin, during a major police operation in which special forces participated.
“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 a member of IS through an instant messaging service” to prepare his attack.
“High threat”
The Minister of the Interior stressed on Sunday “the high threat of Islamist, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel violence.”
Israel’s ambassador in Berlin, Ron Prosor, thanked the German authorities “for guaranteeing the security of our embassy” in a message posted Saturday afternoon on the X social network.
Since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, the German authorities have increased their vigilance in the face of the Islamist threat and the resurgence of anti-Semitism, including so many countries in the world.
In early October there were attacks on the Israeli embassies in Copenhagen and Stockholm. An official from the Swedish intelligence services (Säpo) then indicated that Iran’s involvement was a “hypothesis.”
In early September, German police killed a young Austrian man known for his links to radical Islam as he prepared to carry out an attack on Israel’s consulate general in Munich.
Immigration debate
As part of the investigation, a second apartment was searched on Saturday in the region of North Rhine-Westphalia (west), the prosecutor’s office reported. According to the press, this is an uncle of the suspect with whom he wanted to hide after the attack, before leaving German territory.
The suspect will be presented on Sunday before a judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe. The absence of an expulsion procedure against this man risks relaunching an explosive debate in Germany about the application of expulsion decisions for illegal immigrants.
Olaf Scholz’s government has recently taken a series of measures to tighten immigration control, with one of the key commitments being to speed up expulsions of those who have been refused asylum.
German deputies adopted an important series of measures in this regard on Friday, while the chancellor is under pressure from the rise of the extreme right in Germany, as in the rest of 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 Daesh left three dead and several injured during a party in Solingen (west).
In June, another knife attack, attributed to an Afghan during an anti-Islam demonstration in Mannheim, left one person dead, a police officer who had intervened.
From the beginning of the year to the beginning of October, the police in Germany have recorded more than 3,200 crimes with anti-Semitic motivation, approximately double the same period of the previous year.
Source: BFM TV
