The radical Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas appears to have been planning attacks in Germany. This is the conclusion reached by many months of investigations by journalists of the newspaper Welt am Sonntag. It all started in December 2023 with the arrest in Berlin of a man born in Lebanon named Abdelahim al-Akha, probably a member of Hamas. Digital material and data pointing to maps and locations were found stored on his mobile phone. Based on this material the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Karlsruhe accuses him of planning attacks against German targets, principle of the Israeli embassy in Berlin and the American base in Ramstein, which is the largest of the USA in Europe, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Search for weapons in Europe

Interestingly, the arrested person is accused of participating no later than the spring of 2023 along with 3 others, who were also arrested last December, in locating a cache of Hamas weapons that they had long ago placed somewhere in Europe. The article mentions Bulgaria, but as Ulrich Kretcher from the newspaper’s journalistic research team told Welt TV, the weapons found were rusted and therefore useless. According to the plan they would bring the weapons to Berlin to hit Jewish targets in Germany, and possibly in Europe as well.

According to the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag” contacts between Hamas supporters living in Berlin and military officials in Lebanon are more intense than the authorities have assumed until now. Analysis of online media posts also revealed links especially with the city of Tire in southern Lebanon, which is considered a stronghold of Hamas and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. The Federal Prosecutor General did not want to comment on the German newspaper’s information about the findings on the cell phone of the suspected Hamas member. A spokesperson for the authority cited ongoing investigations.

“New dimension of terrorism»

The arrests and the evidence found have caused alert to the German security authorities. Hamas is a terrorist organization, but it only operated in the Middle East, it never attacked Europe. “Even a few months ago, senior FBI officials were telling us that Hamas was not a headache for the German police” Kretcher told Welt TV. “Perhaps there was once some investigation into a possible flow of money, i.e. donations from Germany to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But if it now turns out that the 4 arrested were planning attacks in Europe, then Germany but rather the whole of Western Europe is faced with a new dimension, a new level of terrorism, because then another terrorist group is added to the usual suspects, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, Hamas which does not want to act only in its regional area, but also in western countries. And that could be threatening for Europe.”