A Hamburg court on Thursday convicted two men of planning to target Josef Schuster, president of Germany's main Jewish community body, and Volker Beck, head of the German-Israeli society. A Danish man, partly identified as Ali Hassan S., received eight and a half years, and an Afghan man recruited as his accomplice received four and a half. They were arrested in Denmark last year and extradited to Germany.
The court said Iran's intelligence service directed the two men, and the judge described them as guilty of terrorist activities orchestrated by Iran. That is the court's finding as reported, and Tehran denies any involvement.
Germany summoned Iran's ambassador on Monday over the plot, and its Foreign Ministry said Tehran would not be allowed to threaten Germany's free society and that such attempts would have legal consequences. Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned Germany's ambassador in response and, in a statement, called the accusations baseless political allegations and said the court was lending a judicial face to unsupported claims. Iran's embassy in Berlin had earlier rejected the allegations, saying they were made at the behest of Iran's enemies.
The specific plans and how far they had progressed have not been made public, and the Danish man's full name has not been published.
