SENIOR German prosecutors have accused Iran’s Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) of organising a string of recent attempted terror attacks against Jews.
The incidents, which all took place last month, include the firing of shots at a synagogue in Essen, the firebombing of a shul in Bochum and an attempted arson at another synagogue in Dortmund.
According to reports by German news agencies, both investigators and the attorney-general’s office in the state of Rhine Westphalia, which covers Germany’s industrial heartland, believe the attacks were coordinated by an Iranian suspect who is thought to have fled to Iran.
“We’re talking about state terrorism here,” one source is quoted as saying.
The investigators reportedly also believe that Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, is in personal danger.
The news comes following months of rising concern at the threat to Jews from the IRGC.
On November 2, Germany expelled Seyed Soliman Mousavafir, the deputy director of the Islamic Centre of Hamburg, after the German equivalent of MI5, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BND), claimed it had evidence he had “ties with various terrorist groups”. It was also claimed that the centre had raised money for the Iranian-backed terror group Hizbollah.
However, such concerns are not confined to Germany.
Earlier this year, IRGC colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei was shot dead in Tehran. Afterwards, Israeli intelligence officials briefed reporters that that he had been coordinating plots ordered by Iran’s Supeme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to attack Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide.
One of the officers under Khoadaei’s command was Mansour Rasouli. In a scene worthy of a Netflix spy series, he was interrogated by the Mossad at his home in Iran, and reportedly said had been ordered to murder an Israeli diplomat in Turkey and a Jewish journalist in France, and was involved in a plot to kill five Israelis in Cyprus. Rasouli claimed he had been abducted and coerced to give this confession.
