Hamas Suspects Charged Over European Weapons Depots, Including Bulgaria

German federal prosecutors have brought charges against four suspected members of Hamas, accusing them of involvement in establishing and managing weapons depots across Europe. The suspects, two Lebanese-born men, an Egyptian citizen, and a Dutchman, allegedly held significant roles within Hamas’s military wing, with direct links to its leadership, according to a statement from the federal prosecutor's office.

One of the suspects reportedly organized a weapons storage site in Bulgaria in early 2019. The cache included a Kalashnikov rifle and ammunition. Investigators also linked Ibrahim the suspect to the clearance of a weapons depot in Denmark in mid-2019, from which he allegedly transported a firearm to Germany. During the second half of 2023, the group allegedly traveled from Berlin to Poland in search of another Hamas weapons depot but failed to locate it.

The discovery of weapons in Bulgaria first surfaced in April, when Spiegel reported that investigators had found photos of firearms, magazines, and other weapon components on a suspect’s mobile phone. This led authorities to southern Bulgaria, where firearms buried in a plastic bag beneath a tree were recovered by Bulgarian police. Some of the weapons showed signs of rust. Initial suspicions pointed to a depot in Poland, but no definitive evidence of a site there has been found.

Prosecutors allege that Hamas has long maintained underground weapons storage facilities across Europe, using foreign agents with European residence permits to oversee them. Potential targets identified by the group included Jewish institutions and key sites in Germany, such as the Israeli embassy in Berlin, the U.S. airbase in Ramstein, and the area around Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport.

The suspects were arrested in December 2023, with Dutch citizen Nazih R. detained in Rotterdam and the other three apprehended in Berlin. None of them had firearms on their person at the time of arrest, but the Bulgarian discovery underscores the existence of Hamas weapons caches in Europe, prosecutors said.

Germany banned Hamas activities following the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the ongoing Gaza conflict. According to investigators, the caches are part of Hamas’s preparations for potential attacks on Jewish institutions across Europe, underscoring the transnational dimensions of its operations.