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Iran hired Hells Angels boss to attack German synagogues

By Jorg Luyken in Berlin

IRAN has recruited a fugitive Hells Angels boss to help organise terrorist attacks on synagogues, police in Germany believe.

Detectives have identified Ramin Yektaparast, a biker boss, as a key suspect as they investigate attacks on two synagogues last month, according to a report by public broadcaster ARD. Mr Yektaparast, who is wanted by German police for carrying out a gangland murder, fled last year to Tehran where he has been ordered by the Revolutionary Guard to organise attacks in Germany, the report says.

“We are talking about state-organised terrorism,” an investigator told the broadcaster.

The first of the two synagogue attacks took place in mid-november when four bullet holes were discovered in the doorway to the Old Synagogue in Essen, a historic building from the early twentieth century.

Soon after, a molotov cocktail was thrown at a school immediately adjacent to the synagogue in nearby Bochum. A 35-year-old Iranian-german national has been arrested in connection with the Bochum attack.

Another man went to the police after the suspect allegedly tried to pressure him into carrying out a further attack at a synagogue in Dortmund.

Mr Yektaparast is being pursued with an international arrest warrant for the murder of a fellow gang member in 2014. Prosecutors issued charges against him earlier this year after a fellow biker told them that Mr Yektaparast had shot a member of their gang whom he believed was a police mole.

The gang then sawed their victim’s body into small pieces, encased it in cement and threw the remains into the Rhine river, the witness said.

Mr Yektaparast has been living in Tehran since at least September last year, but has insisted on social media he merely “on holiday”. An Instagram account belonging to a Ramin Yektaparast shows a strongly built man in his mid-thirties riding motorbikes and driving Lamborghini sports cars.

In a sign that authorities are concerned that the group could be planning further attacks, police in the state of North Rhine-westphalia have increased security measures around Jewish buildings.

Officers guarding the buildings are now equipped with semi-automatic guns and are wearing bullet proof vests.

The group also reportedly tried to spy on Josef Schuster, the head of Germany’s Central Jewish Council.

German intelligence agencies have recently warned that anti-semitism has become more pronounced among extremist groups. One of the worst acts of anti-semitic violence in Germany since the war took place in the town of Halle in 2019, where a Right-wing extremist live-streamed his armed assault on a synagogue.

He was unable to enter the locked building but killed two people outside.

Meanwhile, Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s ultra-conservative president, has travelled to the Kurdistan province to try and calm the unrest that has gripped the region since the early autumn.

In the town of Sanandaj yesterday, the president placed the blame for the protests on foreign “enemies” but said that the country’s Kurdish minority would “foil their plans.”

The Kurdish region has been the epicentre of protests after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman from the region, died in police custody in September.

World News

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2022-12-02T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-12-02T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://dailytelegraph.pressreader.com/article/281900187232770

Daily Telegraph