German police and intelligence agents have launched raids nationwide on the homes of Iranians suspected of plotting attacks on Israelis.
Media reports said at least ten wanted suspects are members of Iran’s notorious Quds Brigades responsible for assassinations both inside and outside their homeland against government critics.
Focus Magazine (in German) reported that hit teams from the Iranian secret intelligence service Vevak were also targeted in the raids in Berlin, Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg and North Rhône-Westphalia.
There is concern about the extent of Iran’s spy network in Germany (file picture)
Police are eager to catch 10 wanted suspects of Iran’s notorious Quds Brigades (file picture)
Police have launched raids throughout Germany (file picture)
So far no arrests have been made, police say (file picture)
Iran has made no secret of its intense dislike of Israel (file photo)
‘We believe the suspects spied on institutions and persons in Germany at the behest of an intelligence unit associated with Iran,’ spokesman Stefan Biehl told The Associated Press.
The government said ‘elaborate observations’ by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic German intelligence agency, led to Tuesday’s swoops.
In September 1992 Iranian hitmen murdered four Iranian exile politicians in the Berlin restaurant Mykonos. In the ensuing investigation it was proved that Iran’s Secret Service had issued the assassination order.
This time Israeli and Jewish interests are understood to have been the target.
But Mr Biehl declined to comment on a report by weekly magazine Focus that the suspects were spying on Israelis in Germany.
He that no arrests had yet been made.
Germany’s Interior Ministry referred questions about the raids to federal prosecutors.
Last month, the German government protested to the Iranian ambassador following the conviction of an Iranian agent for spying.
The Pakistani man was convicted in Berlin last year of espionage and sentenced to more than four years in prison. His targets included Reinhold Robbe, who headed the German-Israeli Association.
Last April, federal prosecutors filed charges against two men suspected of spying on the opposition People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) on behalf of Iranian intelligence, Deutsche Welle reported.
The Paris-based MEK is an Islamist-Marxist-feminist militant group seeking to overthrow Iran’s theocratic government.
Iran has blamed the group for stirring up protests earlier this month in Iran.
In those protests thousands took to the streets to demand cheaper food prices and less unemployment. At least 21 people were killed.
The MEK has also been accused of carrying out covert operations on behalf of Israel and the United States.
Iran and its Lebanese Shia ally Hezbollah have been accused of assassinating numerous Kurd and MEK members throughout Europe.
They are alleged to have carried out multiple deadly attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets abroad.
In 1992, four Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders were assassinated in a Berlin restaurant by Iranian agents.
One of the most serious terror-related incidents on German soil in recent years took place during the 1972 summer Olympics, when 11 Israelis were killed after being taken hostage by members of a Palestinian militant group, Black September, on 5 September.
Two died in the athletes’ Olympic village in Munich. The others were killed during a gun battle with West German police at a nearby airfield – as the militants tried to take them out of the country.