Germany summons Iranian envoy after court convicts spies in plots against Jewish leaders

JTA — Germany’s foreign ministry summoned Iran’s ambassador after a German court convicted two men of spying for Tehran and plotting attacks on a leader of the country’s Jewish community and a prominent non-Jewish supporter of Israel.

A slap on the wrist is not enough, said Volker Beck, president of the interfaith German-Israeli Society, who had been one of the spies’ targets.

Iranian Ambassador Majid Nili Ahmadabadi and most of the embassy’s personnel should be personae non grata in Germany, Beck said. He added he would be satisfied if the embassy was emptied except for a lone guard “to look after the building and this is it.”

Hamburg’s Higher Regional Court last week sentenced 54-year-old defendant S. to eight and a half years in prison and 43-year-old defendant M. to four and a half years for plotting assassinations and an arson attack. The convicts’ full names have not been publicized.

The court found that the two men, living in Denmark, had in early 2025 carried out orders from Iranian intelligence operatives to spy on Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Beck, a Green Party politician and longtime Israel advocate, with the aim of planning an assassination.

In a statement issued October 15, the court said that ​​defendant S. was allegedly tasked “with conducting surveillance on Jewish or Israeli targets — including both locations and individuals — within Germany and preparing to carry out murders and arson attacks against them.”

S. was also convicted of conducting surveillance on a Jewish grocery store in Berlin. “To execute these orders, the defendant S. reportedly enlisted the assistance of the defendant M,” the court said.

The convicted men have until October 22 to appeal the verdict. Further details about the case and the court’s reasoning will be released with the final report, in about three months, a spokesperson for the court told JTA in an email.

In a statement sent to JTA, Schuster praised the verdict but called the case “the tip of the iceberg.”

“With the now proven commissioning of these two spies, the regime in Tehran has once again shown its true face. The masterminds are in Iran, and the danger they pose to our open society remains great as long as the mullahs’ regime exists,” he said.

At the trial, Germany’s federal security agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, testified that it got wind of the plot in 2024, Beck told JTA. “Last year I had six weeks of the highest level of personal protection,” said Beck, who is not Jewish. He couldn’t take out the trash or walk his dog without police protection.

After German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul’s summoned Iran’s ambassador, Iran called in Germany’s ambassador to the country, Axel Wilhelm Dittmann, for a meeting in Tehran to complain about accusations it considers “baseless.”

In a post October 19 on X, the German Foreign Ministry said Germany “will not allow Iran to threaten our free society. We will not tolerate attacks on Jewish life and those who defend it—anywhere, least of all in Germany. The malicious attempted attacks against” Schuster and Beck “will have legal consequences.”