Iran accused of using gang crime to pursue regime opponents in Germany

Spy chief says Tehran aims to repress Iranian citizens linked to Mahsa Amini protest movement

Iranians in German exile protest in Berlin against the death penalty in their home country and for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be designated a terrorist organisation. Reuters

Iran has turned to gang criminals in Germany to help it pursue and threaten regime critics living abroad, a spy chief said on Monday.

Thomas Haldenwang, the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, named Iran and Turkey as two of four countries, along with Russia and China, threatening the safety of their citizens abroad. He said "concrete threats" had been made against people living in Germany.

Tehran has a particular interest in identifying and repressing people linked to the protests that erupted after a young woman's death in the custody of Iranian morality police, Mr Haldenwang said. About 80,000 people joined one demonstration in Berlin after the Mahsa Amini movement spread to Europe in 2022.

Activists who "shaped opinion" during the protests are in Iran's crosshairs and the intelligence agency has observed threats to opposition figures using "proxies from organised crime, who can even represent a threat to life and limb", the spy chief said.

Sweden said in May that Tehran was using Nordic criminal gangs to carry out attacks on Jewish and Israeli interests, a claim the regime denied. There were suspicions of an Iranian link after shootings and explosions near Israeli embassies in Sweden and Denmark two weeks ago.

A German court found last year that a failed attack on a synagogue was ordered by the Iranian state, with fugitive Hell's Angel, Ramin Yektaparast, said to have worked as a middleman for Tehran by passing on orders to an intended arsonist, Babak J.

The remarks by Mr Haldenwang at a parliamentary hearing on Monday suggest the net is being cast beyond Israeli interest to include Iranian citizens. He said Islamist extremists more broadly had contacts with organised crime as part of their efforts to gain influence in Germany.

European backlash

Germany in July raided and shut down a mosque in Hamburg that intelligence chiefs had warned for years was a front for the Iranian regime. Interior Ministry officials said it aimed to export the Iranian revolution and supported Hezbollah, also banned in Germany, as part of a pro-Iran "Axis of Resistance".

EU talks on listing Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorists resumed on Monday, with the German attempted arson case offering a potential legal justification. Britain, meanwhile, made nine new designations under an Iran sanctions regime.

German police raided and shut down the Islamic Centre of Hamburg over its links to Iran in July. AFP

Mr Haldenwang told the intelligence committee that migrants from the four countries concerned were under "clearly perceptible threats". Some of Germany's millions of people with Turkish roots are "under considerable observation" from Ankara, members of parliament were told.

Of particular interest to Turkey are alleged supporters of Fethullah Gulen, the exiled cleric accused by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of being behind a 2016 coup attempt, Mr Haldenwang said. The Gulen movement is banned in Turkey but not in Germany.

A second spy chief, Bruno Kahl of Germany's foreign intelligence agency, said pressure on the diasporas was "not just there, but rising". He said trigger-happy foreign states were intervening over as little as "divergent opinions" held by their citizens living abroad.

Germany is "observing aggressive activity by Russian intelligence agencies”, Mr Haldenwang said, including a sharp rise in espionage and sabotage. Mr Kahl added that the Kremlin is determined to “test the West’s red lines” and will be prepared for a military engagement with Nato by the end of the decade.