Overview
- The Berlin Court of Appeal on Wednesday sentenced four men to about four-and-a-half to six years in prison in the first German case to recognize Hamas as a terrorist group under domestic law.
- The court found the men acted for Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades by scouting and tending hidden gun caches in Poland, Denmark, and Bulgaria for future attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets.
- Official records listed potential targets that included the Israeli Embassy in Berlin, the U.S. Ramstein Air Base in southwestern Germany, and Berlin’s former Tempelhof airport.
- Prosecutors built the case on extensive messages with a Hamas handler, while all four denied membership and one defendant admitted visiting a Bulgarian cache but called it private arms dealing.
- Federal prosecutors are preparing more indictments tied to the same network as European probes continue, following earlier arrests in Germany and a March 6 detention in Cyprus.