German prosecutors announced on Tuesday that a Danish citizen has been arrested in Denmark on suspicion of spying for Iranian intelligence on Jewish organisations and individuals in Berlin.

The suspect, identified as Ali S., was detained last Thursday by police in the Danish city of Aarhus. According to the German federal prosecutor’s office, he is “strongly suspected of having worked for an intelligence service”.

Investigators allege that in early 2025, Ali S. was tasked by an Iranian intelligence agency with gathering information on Jewish sites and specific Jewish individuals in Berlin. As part of this mission, he is said to have conducted surveillance on three locations in June.

Prosecutors stated that these reconnaissance activities were “presumably in preparation for further intelligence operations in Germany, possibly including terrorist attacks on Jewish targets”.

German weekly Der Spiegel reported that Ali S. had photographed several buildings, including the headquarters of the German-Israeli Society in Berlin. The magazine also said investigators believe he was working for the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Germany remains on heightened alert for potential attacks against Jewish communities, particularly following the Hamas assault on Israel on October 7, 2023, which ignited the ongoing war in Gaza.

In recent years, German authorities have disrupted several plots linked to Islamist or Iranian-linked networks. Last September, police shot dead an Austrian man with ties to radical Islam who was planning an attack on the Israeli consulate in Munich. In late 2023, a German-Iranian was jailed for plotting to attack a synagogue in Bochum in 2022 with the support of Iranian state agencies.