German Iranian Charged With Tehran-Guided Arson Attempt
Babak J. was instructed by an intermediary "acting on behalf of unknown Iranian state agencies" in November 2022 to carry out an arson attack on a synagogue in the region of North Rhine-Westphalia, the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement.
Subsequently, the accused is said to have sought to persuade an acquaintance to set fire to a synagogue in Dortmund using a Molotov cocktail but was refused.
Babak J.'s handler allegedly later named another synagogue — in the city of Bochum rather than in Dortmund — as a target, prosecutors said.
"The accused refrained from attacking the well-monitored synagogue in Bochum itself for fear of discovery," they said.
Instead, the suspect tried to set fire to a school building adjoining the synagogue in the western German city, according to prosecutors.
Germany has seen a series of incidents of anti-Semitic violence in recent years, bringing back memories of the country's Nazi past.
Germany this month reported a new record in the number of politically motivated crimes last year, although the number of anti-Semitic crimes declined by almost 13% to 2,641 incidents.
Most of the offenses, 84%, were attributed to the far-right.
The decline was however "no reason to give the all-clear," the interior ministry said in a statement.