Security forces in Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands moved in to arrest several terror suspects on Thursday afternoon in operations to thwart what according to an official statement from the Israeli prime minister’s office is believed to have been multiple Hamas plots to target Jews across Western Europe.
The majority of the arrests occurred in Denmark. Three of the accused appeared physically in Frederiksberg court in Copenhagen, where proceedings were held behind ‘double-closed doors,’ meaning nobody present in the courtroom is allowed to speak on what transpired. Two of the accused remain in custody, while one was released. Four other accused were placed under arrest in absentia. This is usually done to enable police to put out an international arrest warrant.
Politiets Efterretningstjeneste (PET), the intelligence unit of the Danish national police, has pointed the finger at a foreign-backed plot but say they have no concrete information about what the plans were. Danish Radio reports that two of the suspects are part of a criminal gang, one of them wanted for murder.
Reporting laws prevented the release of the names of the accused, however, according to Danish Radio, one of the arrested is “a well-known face in the Copenhagen immigrant community” who has publicly spoken about “civil war and the political situation for Muslims in Denmark.”
Separately from the Danish raids, an alleged Hamas terror cell was busted operating between the cities of Berlin and Rotterdam on Thursday, leading to four arrests. A spokesperson for the German Prosecutor’s Office described a plan by Islamist militants operating in Europe to transport arms to Berlin to facilitate antisemitic terror attacks.
Three of the four arrests occurred in Berlin at around noon on Thursday while the men were in the process of digging up a weapons cache for a prospective attack, according to media reports.
German authorities gave the partially redacted names of the three men arrested as Abdelhamid Al A., Mohamed B., Nazih R. and confirmed to the press that the suspects were of Lebanese and Egyptian extraction.
Another 57-year-old Lebanese national, simply named by Dutch intel services as “Ibrahim El-R,” was also arrested by police in Rotterdam for his part in the cell. All four men arrested are linked to Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigade.
The arrests mark the first instances of Hamas-related terror activity in Germany. Security officials have warned that the country should brace for a wave of Islamist-related violence and violent antisemitism in the wake of the war in Gaza.
Europe has been on edge since the massacre of Jews in Israel by Hamas on October 7th, with security fears that the war could radicalise the continent’s young Muslim community as major pro-Palestinian demonstrations rocked multiple European capitals.
