Germany Expels Leader of Iranian-linked Mosque Over Ties to Terrorist Organizations

Ger­man media report­ed last month that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment had expelled a senior leader of a Ham­burg mosque linked to the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment because he “main­tains close con­tacts with ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions.” Accord­ing to a report by Welt:

June 21, 2022 The Ham­burg State Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion has long regard­ed the Islam­ic Cen­ter Ham­burg (IZH), which oper­ates the Blue Mosque on the Alster, as an out­post of the Iran­ian mul­lah regime in Europe. Here, it says, “Iran­ian Islamists” are at work. The city is part­nered with the cen­ter via a state treaty.  This has repeat­ed­ly sparked crit­i­cism. Now the Inte­ri­or Min­istry is tak­ing action against one of the cen­ter’s lead­ing cadres. The deputy direc­tor, Seyed Soli­man Mousav­i­far, will be expelled, the Inte­ri­or Min­istry con­firmed. He main­tains close con­tacts with ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, it said. The author­i­ties are bas­ing this on find­ings of the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion. First, the “Bild” news­pa­per had report­ed on the case.  After Mousav­i­far was served with an order, he now has three months to leave the coun­try. If he does not leave the coun­try, he could be deport­ed to Iran. [Trans­lat­ed with DeepL]

Read the rest here.

The Islam­ic Cen­tre Ham­burg (IZH) is an influ­en­tial mosque close­ly linked to the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran and mon­i­tored by Germany’s inter­nal intel­li­gence agency for 26 years. The most recent annu­al report of Germany’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency describes the IZH as follows:

June 2022 The “Islamis­ches Zen­trum Ham­burg e.V.” (IZH), the spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tion of the “Imam Ali Mosque” in Ham­burg, is, along with the Iran­ian embassy, the most impor­tant rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Iran in Ger­many and an impor­tant pro­pa­gan­da cen­ter of Iran in Europe. With the help of the IZH, Iran is try­ing to bind Shi­ites of var­i­ous nation­al­i­ties to itself and to spread the social, polit­i­cal and reli­gious basic val­ues of the Iran­ian state in Europe. The Shi­ite umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion “Islamis­che Gemein­schaft der schi­iti schen Gemein­den Deutsch­lands e.V.” (IGS) serves as an impor­tant ele­ment for steer­ing the inter­ests of the IZH. [Trans­lat­ed with DeepL]

Read the rest here.

In April, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report report­ed that the IZH has been involved in a state-rec­og­nized shu­ra coun­cil and is among a group of Iran­ian and Turk­ish influ­ence orga­ni­za­tions hav­ing input in youth welfare.

Iran is one of the most active influ­ence actors in its use of hack­ers and oth­er cyber oper­a­tions. The coun­try also employs an exten­sive net­work of affil­i­at­ed groups and orga­ni­za­tions, such as the Islam­ic Cen­ter of Eng­land and the Islam­ic Cen­tre Ham­burg. Iran also funds PressTV, a glob­al media oper­a­tion in sup­port of its goals.