In recent months, nine suspected Hamas sympathisers have reportedly been arrested. A pre-recorded claim of responsibility video was found in the possession of one of them, German Federal Public Prosecutor Jens Rommel told Deutschlandfunk.
The video allegedly announced an attack planned around the second anniversary of Hamas's assault on Israel, in other words around 7 October 2025. It is not known what exactly the attack was intended to target.
The Karlsruhe-based federal prosecutor's office therefore assumes that the Islamist Palestinian organisation had already identified a specific terrorist target in Europe.
The first three of the nine suspects were arrested in Berlin on 1 October 2025. They are alleged to have been involved, since at least summer 2025, in transporting weapons and ammunition which, according to investigators, were intended for use in attacks on Israeli and Jewish institutions in Germany.
Further investigations in the following months led to the arrest of six more men in Germany and other European countries. They were located in the United Kingdom and Cyprus, while another operation took place in Denmark at the end of May 2026.
According to Germany's federal prosecutor's office, one of the accused is alleged to have stored weapons in the Austrian capital, Vienna.
However, the investigations have not only led to arrests, as there have already been initial convictions in court. At the end of March, four Hamas members were sentenced to prison terms by a Berlin court.
The ruling marked the first time that a higher regional court in Germany had established that Hamas constituted a terrorist organisation under the German Criminal Code.
