German Court Jails Four Men for Stockpiling Weapons for Attacks in Europe

Illustration. (Pexels/Ekaterina Bolovtsova)

JAKARTA - Four men were sentenced to prison in Berlin on Wednesday for being part of a network that stored weapons for potential attacks in Europe under the direction of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The four were identified as Abdelhamid Al A. and Ibrahim El R., both born in Lebanon; Egyptian citizen Mohammed B.; and Dutch citizen Nazih R.

The court sentenced the four men, aged between 36 and 58, for their membership in a foreign terrorist organization, sentencing them to prison terms of between four and six years.

The four have helped build an arsenal as part of "preparations to carry out attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets in European countries," Presiding Judge Doris Husch said, according to Al Arabiya from AFP (26/3).

The four men were arrested in December 2023, weeks after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Nazih R. was arrested in Rotterdam, Netherlands, while the other three were in Berlin.

At the start of the trial in February 2025, prosecutors accused them of "building, maintaining and dismantling underground hideouts" where weapons were stored.

Ibrahim El R., who ran a restaurant in Berlin, travelled to Bulgaria in 2019 to bury a crate containing the weapons there, they said.

He also brought a weapon to Germany from another weapons depot in Denmark in 2019.

Ibrahim El R. (43), was found guilty of illegal possession of weapons and membership in a foreign terrorist organization. He received the longest sentence, namely six years.

The men also tried to retrieve a weapon from a location in Poland, prosecutors said, but failed to find it despite several attempts.

The weapons would be used in attacks on locations such as the Israeli Embassy in Berlin and a US military base in Ramstein, western Germany, prosecutors said.