The Libyan man who plotted an attack on the Israeli embassy in Germany was a failed asylum seeker, according to German news agency dpa.
The man, identified as Omar A., was arrested on Saturday, October 19th in Bernau, a town just outside of Berlin. “He intended to carry out a high-profile attack with firearms on the Israeli embassy in Berlin,” the prosecutor’s office said. He also reportedly exchanged information with a member of the Islamic State terror group.
A heavily armed elite police unit stormed the suspect’s home after receiving a tipoff from an unspecified foreign intelligence agency. Following the attack, the suspect was planning on travelling to a relative in the town of Sankt Augustin near the western city of Bonn before fleeing the country.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that German security authorities “struck in time” to thwart possible plans to attack the embassy.
The suspect is a 28-year-old who arrived in Germany in November 2022 and applied for asylum, but had his request rejected.
This is not the first time a migrant arrested for a heinous crime in Germany turned out to be a failed asylum seeker. Both the gruesome murder of a policeman in Mannheim in May and the terror attack in Solingen in August were committed by migrants who should have been deported—but were allowed to stay in Germany due the country’s lax immigration rules.
After losing ground to anti-immigration parties in recent regional elections, the parties of the German left-liberal government decided to introduce a new security package, which was approved by the parliament on Friday.
The package includes a knife ban at public events, withdrawing the social benefits of rejected asylum seekers, and speeding up the deportation of those who commit serious crimes. Critics of the package have argued that as long as there is no outright rejection of illegal migrants at the border, the new measures account to nothing.
The danger posed by Islamist extremism in Germany, as well as many parts of Western Europe, has increased significantly following Palestinian Hamas’s terror attack inside Israel last year.
An 18-year-old Austrian man with Bosnian roots tried to attack the Israeli consulate in Munich in September.
The number of antisemitic incidents committed in Germany almost doubled in 2023 compared to the year before, according to a recent report.
Antisemitic slogans have been heard at anti-Israel, pro-Hamas rallies, and more of the same took place at a demonstration in Berlin over the last weekend. The antisemitic slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—the desire to wipe Israel off the map—could be heard. In addition, the banners of terror organisations were visible, and police were pelted with various objects. Twelve officers were injured, and dozens of people arrested.
