According to German public prosecutors’s office, four members Hamas terrorist group were arrested in Berlin and the Netherlands. .The prosecutors said they were detained on suspicion of planning attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe, specifically by trying to find and store weapons in Berlin for that purpose.
“This is extremely serious,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said after Copenhagen police and the Danish Security and Intelligence Service arrested several people on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack.
“For a number of years now, we have seen that there are people living in Denmark who do not wish us well. Who are against our freedom and who are against Danish society, with all that it entails,” Frederiksen told reporters at a Brussels summit of EU leaders.
According to Associated Press citing Danish police, three people were arrested in coordinated actions across Denmark and one person in the Netherlands.
Germany’s public prosecutors’s office said four members Hamas terrorist group were arrested in Berlin and the Netherlands. .
The prosecutors said they were detained on suspicion of planning for attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe, specifically by trying to find and store weapons in Berlin for that purpose.
The men were said to be known members of Hamas with close links to the organization’s military branch, one with Dutch nationality, two born in Lebanon and another with Egyptian citizenship.
“Following the terrible attacks by Hamas on the Israeli population, attacks on Jews in Jewish institutions have also increased in our country in recent weeks,” German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said after the arrests.
“We must therefore do everything we can to ensure that Jews in our country do not have to fear for their safety again,” he said.
Germany’s federal prosecutors’ office said that the men were in contact “via a close connection” to the “leadership of the military wing of Hamas.”
One of the main charges they face is membership of a terrorist organization. Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by Germany, Israel, the US, the EU and other governments.
By early 2023 at the latest, one of the men residing in Berlin had been assigned with finding the underground cache and moving the weapons to the Berlin area, prosecutors allege. The three Berlin-based suspects had reportedly since sought to locate the weapons several times, including with help from the man arrested in Rotterdam.
Earlier this month, the European Union’s home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, warned that Europe faced a “huge risk of terrorist attacks” over the Christmas holiday period due to the fallout from the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.