Attack plans against Volker Beck and Josef Schuster – two men sentenced to prison

Two men have been sentenced to years in prison for secret service work on behalf of Iran and attempted involvement in murder and aggravated arson.

The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court sentenced a 54-year-old man to eight and a half years in prison, and a 43-year-old Afghan received a prison sentence of four and a half years. With its verdict, the court complied with the demands of the Federal Prosecutor's Office. The defense lawyers had demanded acquittals.

The Hamburg court found it proven that the two men living in Denmark had spied on the President of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, and the President of the German-Israeli Society, Volker Beck. The 54-year-old also made preparations for an arson attack on a kosher food store in Berlin.

According to the federal prosecutor's office, the 54-year-old Dane with Afghan roots received his orders directly from officers of the so-called Al-Kuds Brigades, the foreign unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He then contacted the 43-year-old to convince him to carry out an assassination attempt on Beck - or at least to get him to find someone else to do it. The latter would ultimately have been agreed upon.