Four men jailed in Germany over Hamas weapons caches

The national flag of Germany flies above the Reichstag in Berlin, Germany, on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025. Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg

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

A court convicted the men, aged between 36 and 58, of membership of a foreign terrorist organization jailing them for between four and six years.

All four had helped build weapons depots as part of “preparations to carry out attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets in European countries”, said presiding judge Doris Husch.

They were partially identified as Abdelhamid Al A. and Ibrahim El R., both born in Lebanon; Egyptian national Mohammed B; and Dutch national Nazih R.

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

At the start of the trial in February 2025, prosecutors accused them of “establishing, maintaining and dismantling underground hideouts” where weapons were kept.

Ibrahim El R., who ran a restaurant in Berlin, travelled to Bulgaria in 2019 to bury a chest full of weapons there, they said.

He also brought a gun into Germany from another weapons depot in Denmark in 2019.

Ibrahim El R., 43, was convicted of possessing illegal weapons and of membership of a foreign terrorist organization. He received the longest sentence of six years.

The men also tried to pick up weapons from a location in Poland, prosecutors said, but failed to locate them despite several attempts.

The arms were to be used in attacks against locations such as the Israeli embassy in Berlin and the U.S. military base at Ramstein in western Germany, said prosecutors.