Hamburg. The President of the German-Israeli Society, Volker Beck, is relieved. While bodyguards don't let him out of their sight in the Hamburg Higher Regional Court, the former Green Party member of the Bundestag says, referring to the verdict that was handed down shortly before: "They're locked away for now." And quite a long time - the court imposed prison sentences of eight and a half and four and a half years on the two defendants for, among other things, secret service agent activity and attempted involvement in murder and aggravated arson on behalf of Iran.
The 54-year-old main perpetrator, who, according to the court, was a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, spied on both Beck and the President of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, in Germany on their behalf. These actions served to prepare state terrorist attacks, specifically an assassination attempt on Beck. The 54-year-old received his orders directly from officers of the so-called Al-Kuds Brigades, the foreign unit of the Revolutionary Guard.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution observed the man during his stay in Berlin last summer. Accordingly, after his arrival from Denmark, he visited, among other things, the office of the German-Israeli Society and the headquarters of the German Ethics Council, of which Schuster is a member. At each location he took photos of the buildings and their surroundings with his cell phone.
He contacted the 43-year-old Iranian with Afghan citizenship who also lives in Denmark and was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in order 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. Specifically, several meetings also discussed the procurement of a pistol with a silencer.
The 54-year-old Dane with Afghan roots also researched Jewish institutions such as a kosher supermarket in Berlin that was set to burn in an arson attack. According to the court, he asked his 21-year-old daughter whether she knew a Somali or Palestinian woman who needed money and would be willing to fly to Germany to get it. He promised 30,000 Danish crowns - a good 4,000 euros - in return.
The court was convinced that the planned attacks were centrally controlled by Iran and should be carried out decentrally. "The chairwoman said, 'Iran is exporting its terror here to Europe. We won't accept that.' From the perspective of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, I can fully agree with this,” said Federal Prosecutor Stephan Morweiser after the verdict, which was exactly as the Federal Prosecutor’s Office had requested.
What is particularly important for his office is “that the Senate clearly named the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as the sponsor of these successfully prevented attacks,” says Morweiser. Beck sees it that way too. However, he goes even further and demands that the federal government should not let the higher regional court's findings go unnoticed. “I demand that the Iranian ambassador be expelled from Germany immediately and that the embassy staff of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Berlin be drastically reduced to a minimum,” says Beck.
The main perpetrator was the first time someone was actively operating on European territory to carry out Iranian state terrorism - according to a typical pattern, says Beck. On the one hand, the 54-year-old is an Iranian-influenced Islamist and on the other hand, the 43-year-old is a serious criminal who is to be hired to carry out the crime. This means Iran can then deny the crime and does not have to sacrifice any of its own people, says Beck.
The 54-year-old's lawyer, Shahryar Ebrahim-Nesbat, speaks of a politically motivated verdict, against which he will appeal. He and the 43-year-old's defense had demanded acquittals. Ebrahim-Nesbat says the court followed the federal prosecutor's office even though nothing actually happened. “No one was hurt.”
For Volker Beck, however, nothing happened. "I'm super tense, I've just had an adrenaline overdose." Of course it is a relief that the men have been convicted. “Iran has lost two tools, but that doesn’t mean Iran is giving up its plans.” Iran is targeting Jewish life in general and targeting those who stand before the Jewish and democratic state of Israel. He wants to spread terror and silence people. For him personally this now means: “A high concrete danger has been transformed into a high abstract danger.”
