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German Police Chief Voices Concern Over Islamist Terror Threat
Pro-Hamas demonstrators marching in Munich, Germany. Photo: Reuters/Alexander Pohl
The head of Germany’s police service on Wednesday said there was little doubt that four men detained on Dec. 14 were planning terrorist attacks on Jewish targets at the behest of Hamas.
“There is an urgent suspicion that the accused allegedly planned an attack against Jewish institutions in Europe and wanted to collect weapons that they hid in a depot,” Holger Münch — the president of the German Federal Criminal Office (BKA) — stated in an interview with the Swiss news outlet NZZ.
Asked whether the alleged terrorists had set up their weapons dump at a site in Poland, Münch said only that it was “somewhere in Europe” and that further details would emerge from intelligence reports.
Three of the suspects were arrested in Berlin, according to a statement from the office of Germany’s Federal Prosecutor General. A fourth man was arrested in the Dutch city of Rotterdam and was extradited to Karlsruhe in Germany where the accused are awaiting trial.
Additionally, Danish police arrested three individuals on the same day in Copenhagen charged with planning terrorist attacks on Jewish targets, though it is not clear if the operations were connected. “It is a great strength that there is very intensive international cooperation in the fight against Islamist terrorism,” Münch said. “Our partners give us tips, we give them tips.”
Münch emphasized that the threat posed by Islamist terrorism was “never gone.”
“We still have a large number of radicalized people who continue to try to find themselves in the various forums and [chat] groups. The current Middle East conflict acts as an amplifier because it is emotionally charged,” he said, referring to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. “At the moment, the danger therefore arises in particular from radicalized individual perpetrators or small groups who are planning comparatively easy to carry out attacks, for example with knives or vehicles, objects that are readily available.”
Münch also confessed that he was surprised by the “order of magnitude” of the antisemitic and Islamist propaganda circulating in Germany since the Oct. 7. Hamas pogrom in southern Israel.
“We have registered more than 4,700 crimes related to the terrorist attacks on Israel since Oct. 7,” he said. “These are quite often antisemitic crimes that are recorded as property damage or propaganda and incitement offenses by the police. Much of this crime is committed by people to whom we attribute to politically motivated crime — foreign ideology or religious ideology.”
Asked about the high proportion of Muslim immigrants detained for antisemitic agitation, Münch said that “we have to be even clearer about what our expectations of all people living here in Germany are.”
He continued: “It must be clear that certain values based on our history are inviolable. This includes Israel’s right to exist as well as the security of Jews in Germany.”
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UN Security Council Meets on Iran as Russia, China Push for a Ceasefire
Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The U.N. Security Council met on Sunday to discuss US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites as Russia, China and Pakistan proposed the 15-member body adopt a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Middle East.
It was not immediately clear when it could be put to a vote. The three countries circulated the draft text, said diplomats, and asked members to share their comments by Monday evening. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China to pass.
The US is likely to oppose the draft resolution, seen by Reuters, which also condemns attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and facilities. The text does not name the United States or Israel.
“The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States marks a perilous turn in a region that is already reeling,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Sunday. “We now risk descending into a rathole of retaliation after retaliation.”
“We must act – immediately and decisively – to halt the fighting and return to serious, sustained negotiations on the Iran nuclear program,” Guterres said.
The world awaited Iran’s response on Sunday after President Donald Trump said the US had “obliterated” Tehran’s key nuclear sites, joining Israel in the biggest Western military action against the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution.
U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council that while craters were visible at Iran’s enrichment site buried into a mountain at Fordow, “no one – including the IAEA – is in a position to assess the underground damage.”
Grossi said entrances to tunnels used for the storage of enriched material appear to have been hit at Iran’s sprawling Isfahan nuclear complex, while the fuel enrichment plant at Natanz has been struck again.
“Iran has informed the IAEA there has been no increase in off-site radiation levels at all three sites,” said Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran requested the U.N. Security Council meeting, calling on the 15-member body “to address this blatant and unlawful act of aggression, to condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
Israel‘s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement on Sunday that the U.S. and Israel “do not deserve any condemnation, but rather an expression of appreciation and gratitude for making the world a safer place.”
Danon told reporters before the council meeting that it was still early when it came to assessing the impact of the U.S. strikes. When asked if Israel was pursuing regime change in Iran, Danon said: “That’s for the Iranian people to decide, not for us.”
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Israel Rejects Critical EU Report Ahead of Ministers’ Meeting
FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Israel has rejected a European Union report saying it may be breaching human rights obligations in Gaza and the West Bank as a “moral and methodological failure,” according to a document seen by Reuters on Sunday.
The note, sent to EU officials ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, said the report by the bloc’s diplomatic service failed to consider Israel’s challenges and was based on inaccurate information.
“The Foreign Ministry of the State of Israel rejects the document … and finds it to be a complete moral and methodological failure,” the note said, adding that it should be dismissed entirely.
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Pope Leo Urges International Diplomacy to Prevent ‘Irreparable Abyss’
FILE PHOTO: Pope Leo XIV holds a Jubilee audience on the occasion of the Jubilee of Sport, at St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican June 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi/File Photo
Pope Leo on Sunday said the international community must strive to avoid war that risks opening an “irreparable abyss,” and that diplomacy should take the place of conflict.
US forces struck Iran’s three main nuclear sites overnight, joining an Israeli assault in a major new escalation of conflict in the Middle East as Tehran vowed to defend itself.
“Every member of the international community has a moral responsibility: to stop the tragedy of war before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” Pope Leo said during his weekly prayer with pilgrims.
“No armed victory can compensate for the pain of mothers, the fear of children, the stolen future. Let diplomacy silence the weapons, let nations chart their future with peace efforts, not with violence and bloody conflicts,” he added.
“In this dramatic scenario, which includes Israel and Palestine, the daily suffering of the population, especially in Gaza and other territories, risks being forgotten, where the need for adequate humanitarian support is becoming increasingly urgent,” Pope Leo said.
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