German police on Saturday arrested a Libyan man for allegedly plotting an attack on the country’s Israeli embassy.
Police raided an apartment in Bernau, just north of Berlin, apprehending the 28-year-old suspect, the report said.
A tip from a foreign intelligence service led to the operation, according to the Bild newspaper. The suspect was not previously on any watchlist in Germany, the report said. There were indications the man intended to target the Israeli embassy in Berlin, and he had possible links to Islamic State, according to a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office.
Der Spiegel identified the suspect as Omar A. He is expected to appear before a judge on Sunday.
Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, thanked German authorities for protecting the embassy, commenting on social media that “Muslim anti-Semitism drives global terrorism,” and emphasizing that embassy staff are particularly vulnerable.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agencies upped their alert level following recent attacks on Israeli embassies in Copenhagen and Stockholm, amid the ongoing conflict sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre in Israel. In September, Munich police officers fatally shot a gunman with extremist ties who had opened fire at the Israeli consulate.
German police had recorded over 3,200 anti-Semitic crimes by early October, nearly double last year’s figures for the same period.
Saturday’s raid included a search of a second apartment in Sankt Augustin, near Bonn, which belonged to the suspect’s uncle, who is being treated as a witness. Authorities suspect the man had planned to flee to his uncle’s residence after the attack, and then to leave Germany. The suspect had reportedly entered Germany in November 2022 and sought asylum, which was denied in September 2023.
