Berlin Summons Iran Ambassador Over 2022 Synagogue Plot

BERLIN — Germany on Wednesday said it had summoned the Iranian ambassador over an attempted arson attack on a synagogue in 2022 that Berlin believes was planned with the help of Tehran. 

A German Iranian national was sentenced in December to two years and nine months in prison in the plot to attack a synagogue in the western German city of Bochum. 

The 36-year-old, identified only as Babak J., had planned to target the synagogue but ended up throwing an incendiary device at an adjacent school building. No one was injured. 

In handing down the verdict, the Duesseldorf court said the attack had been planned with the help of “Iranian state agencies.” 

The foreign ministry on Wednesday said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that it had summoned the Iranian envoy after receiving a written justification of the judgment. 

“We will now immediately share the judgment with our European partners and the EU institutions and examine further steps,” the ministry said. 

Germany also summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires in December over the plot. 

A summoning is a way for a nation to show high-level disapproval with another country. 

Germany has grown increasingly alarmed in recent years about rising anti-Jewish sentiment nearly eight decades after the end of the Holocaust. 

Anti-Semitic acts have increased sharply in the country amid the latest turmoil in the Middle East, according to the Federal Association of Research and Information Centers on Anti-Semitism. 
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