Hamburg court jails 2 Iran agents over Jewish leader plot
The Higher Regional Court in Hamburg has sentenced two men to prison for spying on Jewish leaders in Germany on behalf of Iran and preparing attacks. The verdict was handed down on Thursday 15 October 2026. The main defendant, 54-year-old Ali S., received eight and a half years. His co-defendant, 43-year-old Tawab M., received four and a half years.
The court found both men guilty of working for a foreign intelligence service and of attempted involvement in murder and aggravated arson. According to the court, Ali S., who lived in Denmark, collected his orders in Tehran in early 2025 from the Quds Force, the foreign unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. He was told to spy on Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, on Volker Beck, president of the German-Israeli Society, and on a kosher supermarket in Berlin.
In summer 2025 Ali S. travelled to Berlin and photographed possible targets while Germany's domestic intelligence service was watching him. He then tried to win Tawab M. for an attack on Beck, or at least to find someone else to carry it out. Both men were arrested in Aarhus, Denmark, and handed over to Germany. The sentences match what federal prosecutors had demanded. The defence had asked for acquittals, and neither defendant spoke during the trial.
"Iran is trying to export its terror to Germany," presiding judge Petra Wende-Spors said when explaining the verdict. According to findings of Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Berlin supermarket was one of eleven targets Iran had in its sights in Germany. After the arrests, the German Foreign Office summoned Iran's ambassador. Iran's embassy in Berlin rejected the accusations.