Plan to attack German synagogue on Yom Kippur was foiled, police say

Police guard the synagogue of Hagen, Germany, Sept. 16, 2021. Courtesy of Roberto Pfeil/Getty

By Toby Axelrod September 17, 2021

(JTA) — German police said they thwarted a planned Islamist attack on a synagogue in Hagen on Yom Kippur after receiving a tip from an unnamed foreign intelligence service.

Officers took a father of Syrian background and three sons into custody for questioning on Thursday morning, according to the newspaper Die Welt. All but one son — a 16-year-old with ties to Islamists abroad — were released.

The synagogue in Hagen, a city near Dusseldorf in western Germany, was under police protection on Wednesday, and Yom Kippur services were canceled the following day.

Jewish community leaders had not commented as of Thursday.

In a statement, the Central Council of Jews in Germany thanked the security authorities and said the apparent plan to attack a synagogue “on the highest holiday … shows that the increase in security measures at many Jewish institutions was and is necessary.”

Herbert Reul, minister of the interior for the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, told the German media that police had received a concrete tip, including the time and location of the planned attack, and the name of the suspect.

The 16-year-old, a Syrian national, reportedly had made comments on the internet platform Telegram to someone named “Abu Hab” about attacking the synagogue on a Jewish holiday.

Focus magazine reported that the contact had shared bombmaking instructions with the teen. The suspect told investigators that he had not planned such an attack.

While police confiscated phones and hard drives, no bombmaking materials had yet been found. Investigators reportedly are working with terrorism authorities on the case.

The Hagen community had 264 members in 2020, according to Germany’s Jewish communal welfare organization. The synagogue was built in 1960.

On Yom Kippur in 2019, a right-wing extremist tried to shoot his way into the synagogue in Halle. Unable to breach the door, he shot and killed two passersby. The gunman is serving a life sentence.

One year ago, Germany pledged an increase of about $26 million to its Jewish umbrella organization to cover the costs of drastic improvements to the physical security of synagogues and other communal buildings.

—
The post Plan to attack German synagogue on Yom Kippur was foiled, police say appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO