Four suspected members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas went on trial in Berlin on Tuesday, accused of having maintained secret weapons depots for the radical Islamist organization in several European countries.
“For the first time in Germany, people are facing charges of having participated as members of the foreign terrorist organization Hamas,” German federal prosecutor Jochen Weingarten said on Tuesday.
Shortly after the unprecedented Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the German prosecutors received a tip from the country’s BfV domestic intelligence service about a “conspiratorial weapons-related operation by Hamas in Germany,” Weingarten revealed, which prompted covert investigations.
The defendants, men aged between 34 and 57, have been in custody since December 2023. They were arrested in Berlin and the Netherlands.
They face criminal charges of membership in a foreign terrorist organization.
According to the indictment, the suspects held “important positions within Hamas with direct links to leaders of the military wing.”
All four are accused by prosecutors of having been in “close personal contact” with a Hamas official who was allegedly responsible for preparing attacks in Europe and who was allegedly killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon on November 21, 2023.
The four suspects were under the “command and control” of the Hamas official, prosecutors alleged.
According to defence lawyers, the men will not be making any statements to the court, at least for the time being.
“My client denies the allegations. He will defend himself in silence,” said the lawyer for the 57-year-old defendant.
He hopes that the judges will be open enough to “alternative theses” against the backdrop of the tense global situation, said the lawyer.
Investigators accuse Hamas of having stockpiled weapons in underground depots in readiness for possible attacks against Israeli, Jewish or other organizations in Europe.
Hamas’s declared aim is the destruction of the state of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic regime in the Palestinian territories.
As part of the investigation, several firearms as well as ammunition were seized in a weapons depot in Bulgaria, including a Kalashnikov assault rifle, according to Weingarten.
The main 57-year-old defendant is said to have set up this depot in early 2019. A few months later, he is said to have cleared out a weapons cache in Denmark for Hamas and brought a pistol from it to Germany.
In August 2023, he then allegedly travelled to Bulgaria again on instructions to inspect the depot.
Finally, between June and December 2023, all four defendants are said to have set out from Berlin several times for the south-west of Poland in search of another weapons depot.
However, their searches with shovels and sticks were unsuccessful, and ended after authorities arrested them.
It is still unclear whether the depot really existed, and also unclear how concrete and detailed any possible attack plans were.
Special security precautions are in place for the trial at the top criminal court in Berlin, the Kammergericht, according to a court spokeswoman.
Presiding judge Doris Husch has scheduled the first witnesses for the second day of the trial on March 5.
The prosecution has listed a total of around 50 witnesses and several expert witnesses, with dates scheduled to last until December.
One of the two Lebanese-born defendants is brought before the Court of Appeal for the trial against a total of four suspected members of Hamas. Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters Pool/dpa
