German authorities believe that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is behind a series of recent attacks on synagogues. The authorities suspect that the Iranians pose a threat to a local Jewish leader
The German news website Tagesschau reported that German authorities believe that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is behind a series of recent attacks on synagogues. According to the report, an investigation led by the attorney general of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, determined that the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Joseph Schuster, is in danger and is a target of the Iranian unit, who are suspected of carrying out the other attacks.
The attacks included shots at a synagogue in Essen, a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in Bochum, and an attempt to set fire to a synagogue in Dortmund, all in the middle of last November. According to the report, there is a German-Iranian suspect known as Ramin, who apparently fled to Iran last year.
German security officials believe that the suspect, who is wanted on an international arrest warrant for “murder”, has operational command of the Revolutionary Guard attack plots in Germany. “We are talking here about state terrorism,” a researcher was quoted as saying.
The latest attacks in Germany on synagogues happened three years after a terrorist killed two non-Jews in the city of Halle in the east of the country, after he failed to attack a synagogue on Yom Kippur. Before the attack, he published a racist and misogynistic and anti-Semitic manifesto on social media.
According to the report, the suspect, who goes by the name Ramin Y., is wanted on an international arrest warrant, among other things, for murder. The security authorities assume that Y. is responsible for the attacks in Germany for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. On the night of November 18, at the beginning of the week, a 35-year-old German-Iranian was arrested in Dortmund. He was supposed to be in contact with Ramin Y., the accused is accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the home of the local rabbi adjacent to the synagogue in Bochum. It was also reported that he tried to convince another person to set fire to the synagogue in Dortmund.