Spied on Jewish leaders: German court jails two men working for Iran
A Hamburg court sentenced two men to eight and a half and four and a half years in prison. One was also found to have prepared an arson attack on a kosher shop in Berlin.
Archive image · Photo: Flocci Nivis / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg on Thursday convicted two men living in Denmark of working for Iranian intelligence. The 54-year-old main defendant was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison and a 43-year-old to four and a half years. The court also found them guilty of attempted participation in murder and serious arson, in line with federal prosecutors' demands. Defence lawyers had sought acquittals.
The court found that the men had spied on Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Volker Beck, president of the German-Israeli Society. The 54-year-old also prepared an arson attack on a kosher food shop in Berlin and tried to recruit his co-defendant for an attack on Beck.
According to federal prosecutors, the main defendant received his orders directly from officers of the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.