The trial marks the first in Germany in which suspects are being tried for belonging to Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation in the EU.
Three of the men were arrested in Berlin and the fourth in the Netherlands in December 2023, following a tip-off from a foreign intelligence service, according to the German public prosecutor.
The men, named by the court as Ibrahim El-R, Nazih R, Abdelhamid Al-A, and Mohamed B, are alleged to have reported directly to Hamas’s former second in command, Khalil Hamed al-Kharraz, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in November 2023.
Ibrahim El-R, who was said to have run a restaurant in the German capital, is accused of burying a rifle and several pistols with ammunition in a plastic bag under a fir tree near the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv.
The prosecutor claimed that between June and December 2023, the defendants followed instructions from Hamas leaders in Lebanon to locate a weapons cache in southern Poland. It said: “The weapons were due to be taken to Berlin and kept in a state of readiness in view of potential terrorist attacks against Jewish institutions in Europe.”
The cache, however, could not be found and the search was abandoned following the death of Kharraz.
In total, 57 trial days have been scheduled to take place between now and December in central Berlin.
