Libyan arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning Israeli embassy attack

Prosecutors said the accused exchanged information with a member of ISIL in a messenger chat and was planning to use firearms in his assault.

A Libyan national with suspected ties to the ISIL (ISIS) group who was planning an attack on the Israeli embassy in Berlin has been arrested in Germany, the authorities said.

Police and other security forces arrested the man on Saturday evening in Bernau, a town just outside the capital, Berlin, and searched his home, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement on Sunday.

The prosecutor’s office identified the 28-year-old man only as Omar A in keeping with Germany’s strict privacy laws.

“He intended to carry out a high-profile attack with firearms on the Israeli Embassy in Berlin,” the statement said. “The accused exchanged information with a member of [ISIL] in a messenger chat.”

Security forces also searched the home of another person near the city of Bonn, who was considered a witness but not a suspect, the statement said.

German newspaper Bild said the Libyan man was believed to have entered Germany in November 2022 and to have made a request for asylum the following January, which was rejected in September 2023.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said German security authorities “struck in time to thwart possible plans to attack the Israeli Embassy in Berlin”.

The suspect is expected to be brought before an investigating judge at the country’s highest court, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, on Sunday, the prosecutor’s office said.

The authorities acted after receiving a tip-off from an unspecified foreign intelligence agency, local media reported, with a heavily armed elite police unit storming the suspect’s home in Bernau.

“We are acting with the utmost vigilance and attention in view of the high threat posed by Islamist, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel violence,” Faeser said.

Justice Minister Marco Buschmann warned on Sunday about the threat of such acts.

“Israeli institutions are particularly often the target of terrorists,” he told the German news agency dpa.

Tensions between supporters of Israel and those incensed at Israel’s war on Gaza over the past year have flared in Germany for months. Pro-Palestine demonstrators say they have faced repeated violence from police and counterdemonstrators.