Iran summons Germany’s ambassador over Berlin accusing Tehran in a plot to attack a synagogue

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s foreign ministry summoned the German ambassador to Tehran on Wednesday in protest against a ruling that implicated the Islamic Republic in a plan to attack a synagogue in Germany last year, the state-run IRNA news agency said.

The report said the ministry summoned German Ambassador Hans-Udo Muzel to deliver the protest after the Duesseldorf state court convicted a 36-year-old German-Iranian man of attempted arson and agreeing to commit arson and sentenced him to two years and nine months in prison.

Judges found that the man threw an incendiary device at a school in the western city of Bochum in November 2022 because the neighboring synagogue appeared too well secured. The defendant denied planning to attack the synagogue. The school reportedly sustained had minor damage.

The court found the defendant had been tasked with the attack by a former Hells Angels member who had gone to Iran, and that Iran was behind the latter man. The German judges established that “the plan for the attack stems from an Iranian state institution,” according to a statement, which didn’t give more precise details.

Iran slammed the ruling as a “baseless accusation,” IRNA said.

On Tuesday, the German Foreign Ministry summoned the Iranian chargé d’affaires to discuss the matter, which Tehran also condemned as “an unacceptable measure”.

In a separate development, the Iranian media said the foreign ministry in Tehran also summoned the Swedish chargé d’affaires after a Swedish appeals court on Tuesday endorsed the life sentence given to Hamid Noury for war crimes and murder during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

According to the Stockholm District Court, Noury took part in severe atrocities in July-August 1988 while working as an assistant to the deputy prosecutor in a prison outside the Iranian city of Karaj. Noury, who was arrested in November 2019 when he arrived in Stockholm on a tourist trip, had appealed the ruling.