BERLIN: German prosecutors said Tuesday a suspect had been detained in Denmark on suspicion of spying on Jewish organisations and people in Berlin for Iranian intelligence services.
The Danish suspect, identified only as Ali S., was arrested in the city of Aarhus by local police on Thursday, the German federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The man was “strongly suspected of having worked for an intelligence service”, they said.
Ali S. had in early 2025 “received an order from an Iranian intelligence service to collect information on Jewish localities and specific Jewish individuals in Berlin”.
To this end, he allegedly scoped out three properties in June.
The suspected reconnaissance work was “presumably in preparation of further intelligence activities in Germany, possibly including terrorist attacks on Jewish targets”, the statement said.
According to German weekly Der Spiegel, the suspect had taken photos of buildings including the seat of the German-Israeli Society in Berlin.
Investigators believe Ali S. was working on behalf of the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Der Spiegel reported.
Germany has been on high alert for possible attacks against Jews since Palestinian militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza.
In September, German police shot dead a young Austrian man known to have had ties to radical Islam as he was preparing to carry out an attack on the Israeli consulate in Munich.
German authorities have also been on alert for potential Iranian espionage activity on their soil.
A German-Iranian national was jailed in late 2023 over a plot to attack a synagogue in the western German city of Bochum in 2022.
Authorities said the plot was planned with the help of “Iranian state agencies”.
