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A Libyan man with alleged ties to the Islamic State extremist group was arrested by German police on suspicion of planning a terror attack against the Israeli Embassy in Berlin.
The 28-year-old man, identified only as Omar A. due to German privacy laws, was taken into custody by heavily armed police officers during a raid on his uncle’s apartment in the town of Bernau, just northeast of Berlin, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported Sunday.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office said he intended to mount a “high profile attack with firearms on the Israeli Embassy in Berlin.”
To “plan the attack, the suspect exchanged information with an IS member in a Messenger chat,” prosecutors said in a statement.
His arrest Saturday evening reportedly came after German authorities were tipped off by a foreign intelligence service that said he hoped to flee the country after the attack by first traveling to a relative’s home in town of Sankt Augustin, near Bonn.
That home was searched by police but the relative is not being treated as a suspect and is considered a potential witness in the case, according to German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
Omar A. entered Germany in November 2022 and applied for asylum in January 2023, according to Bild.
That claim was rejected eight months later and he was ordered deported to Libya but continued living in Bernau, Bild said.
Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor thanked German authorities “for ensuring the security of our embassy” and German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the arrest “shows that protecting Jewish and Israeli institutions in our country is vital and of the utmost importance,” according to the Associated Press.
German has seen a sharp increase in antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the ongoing wars in the Middle East, AP said.
