A 25-year-old Danish citizen has been arrested near Copenhagen on suspicion of assisting Hamas in preparations for potential terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets in Europe, according to German prosecutors.
The arrest was carried out discreetly by Danish police last week following a request from German authorities. Police confirmed that the suspect was apprehended at 9:44 p.m. in the Greater Copenhagen area and subsequently remanded in custody for four weeks pending a decision on his extradition to Germany.
According to the German Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, the man is suspected of being a member of Hamas and of participating in the logistical preparations for planned attacks targeting Israeli or Jewish institutions in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
Prosecutors allege that in July 2024, the suspect supplied five pistols and ammunition to another individual, identified as Abed Al G., who is already in German custody. The weapons were then allegedly passed on to a third suspect, Mohammed A., who is accused of arranging their transport to Vienna.
The investigation centres on a suitcase discovered in a rented storage facility in the Austrian capital last autumn. Austrian security authorities reportedly recovered five firearms and ten ammunition magazines. The discovery was made as part of a broader multinational intelligence operation involving security services from several European countries, including Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom and Denmark.
German authorities had issued a European Arrest Warrant for the Danish citizen shortly before his arrest. He now faces allegations of membership in a foreign terrorist organisation, preparation of a terrorist act, and violations of German firearms legislation.
The case forms part of a wider investigation into a Hamas-linked network operating across Europe. Several arrests connected to the same investigation have previously been made in Germany and Denmark.
In November 2024, a Lebanese national residing in Denmark was arrested by German police near the Czech border. The following day, Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service (PET) searched an address in the Copenhagen area and announced that another individual in Denmark had been charged in connection with the case.
Later that month, German federal police arrested another suspect aboard a train travelling from Denmark towards Flensburg. The man, a Lebanese citizen living in Oberhausen, Germany, is suspected of receiving a rifle, eight pistols and more than 600 rounds of ammunition from another individual already detained in Berlin.
German authorities have also linked the network to Denmark through allegations that a Hamas-connected weapons cache once existed near Nyborg on the island of Funen. Prosecutors claim the cache was emptied in 2019, with at least one firearm subsequently smuggled into Germany.
The latest arrest comes amid heightened concern among European security agencies regarding the activities of Hamas-linked operatives on the continent. In its recently published assessment of the terrorist threat facing Denmark, the Centre for Terror Analysis noted that several individuals connected to Hamas and other militant Islamist groups involved in the Gaza conflict have been arrested across Europe, including in Denmark.
The report further stated that some of these individuals have ties to organised criminal networks operating in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe.
