Attacks planned in Europe
Missing Hamas weapons cache discovered in Bulgaria
April 3, 2024, 7:02 p.m
Hamas has long been hiding weapons in Europe. Four followers are supposed to find them and probably use them to carry out attacks in Europe. They go looking but are arrested. For a long time there was no trace of the weapons. Now they are apparently being discovered, but not where they were expected.
Three and a half months after the arrest of four suspected members of the terrorist organization Hamas in Germany and the Netherlands, a weapons cache has been found in Bulgaria, according to information from the AFP news agency. The men were arrested in December because they were said to be looking for weapons that investigators said were being kept ready for possible future attacks.
Accordingly, the Federal Criminal Police Office discovered photos of weapons, weapon parts and ammunition on the cell phone of one of the arrested men – digital traces would have led the investigators to the hiding place. The weapons were apparently buried in a plastic bag under a tree in southern Bulgaria. Bulgarian police confiscated the weapons, according to the report. Some of them were already rusty.
The arrests took place in Berlin and Rotterdam in mid-December. According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Karlsruhe at the time, the men were said to have been looking for an underground weapons cache in Europe that had been secretly set up by Hamas in the past. One of those arrested in Berlin is said to have been ordered by Hamas leadership to locate the weapons. According to “Spiegel”, the order for this came from Lebanon.
Islamists suspect weapons in Poland
Three of those arrested made their way from Berlin several times. Investigators suspected that the weapons were hidden in Poland for a long time. The men traveled there several times. It is still unclear whether there is a hiding place there, despite the weapons discovery in Bulgaria.
According to the information, the weapons were to be brought to Berlin and kept ready for possible attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe. The attack plans are not said to have been concrete yet. The reference to this is said to come from the Israeli secret service, reports “Spiegel”. In January, he himself made details of a suspected Hamas network public, the magazine reports.
As the federal prosecutor’s office said at the time, all four defendants were said to have belonged to Hamas for years, to have taken part in the organization’s actions abroad and to have had close contacts with leaders of the military wing. They are strongly suspected of membership in a foreign terrorist organization. They are now in custody.