Authorities in Denmark were holding two individuals in custody and four others were named as part of a terrorism investigation just one day after the arrest of four suspected Hamas members in Germany and the Netherlands, CBS News reported.
In a December 14 statement, Germany’s federal prosecutor said of the four suspected Hamas members, three were arrested in Germany while the fourth was taken into custody in the Netherlands. The four individuals are suspected of planning terrorist attacks on Jewish institutions, the prosecutor said.
Two of the three arrested in Germany were Lebanese nationals and the third was from Egypt. The fourth suspect arrested in the Netherlands was described as a Dutch national.
Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the arrests show that German securities authorities have acted vigilantly and consistently. She said protecting Jewish citizens “is our top priority” and Germany would use “all constitutional means” to ensure that Jews living in Europe are safe.
German authorities said three of the men arrested were “longstanding members of Hamas” and had been involved in Hamas operations abroad. The suspects also have close links to the terror group’s military branch, the federal prosecutor said.
While officials in Denmark said their investigation was not directly connected to the arrests made in Germany and the Netherlands, they did not immediately say if the suspects in their investigation had any links to Hamas.
Danish officials provided little details of the investigation, except to say that the arrests had “threads abroad” and were “related to criminal gangs,” particularly from the Loyal to Familia gang that is banned in Denmark. The predominantly immigrant gang is behind a spate of violence, robberies, drug trafficking, and extortion in Denmark’s capital Copenhagen.
While two of the suspects in Denmark were currently in pretrial detention until January 9, the whereabouts of the other four suspects were not immediately known.
