Iran-Controlled Islamic Centre In Germany Involved in Injury Trial

Ger­man media is report­ing about a tri­al in Ham­burg which involves an employ­ee of the Islam­ic Cen­tre Ham­burg, an influ­en­tial mosque close­ly linked to the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran. Accord­ing to a Welt arti­cle:

March 3, 2021 The defen­dant D., 56 years old, father of a fam­i­ly, four daugh­ters, says he works as an inter­preter and trans­la­tor in the blue mosque on the Alster. Wit­ness Z is sit­ting a few meters away in the court­room. […] “I want­ed to protest, show the world what Iran is doing to us,” he says. […] In front of the fence, he start­ed denounc­ing the Iran­ian sup­port for the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion Hezbol­lah and set fire to a pic­ture of Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamenei. He also railed against the “ter­ror mosque”. “I was loud so that all the neigh­bors could hear me.” As a result, a man from the mosque rushed towards him, a stone in hand, and attacked him. [Trans­lat­ed with Google Translate]

Read the rest here.

The arti­cle goes on to describe the Islam­ic Cen­tre Ham­burg (IZH) as the most impor­tant mosque in Ger­many linked to Iran and reports that it has been mon­i­tored by Germany’s inter­nal intel­li­gence agency for 26 years:

The Islam­ic Cen­tre Ham­burg (IZH) is the bear­er of the Imam Ali mosque, in front of whose fence the fight took place. The IZH has been men­tioned in the annu­al report of the Ham­burg Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion for 26 years. It is not a nor­mal mosque on the Out­er Alster, but, accord­ing to the con­sti­tu­tion pro­tec­tion report, “Iran­ian Islamists”. “The IZH has estab­lished a nation­wide net­work of con­tacts and exer­cis­es influ­ence on Shi­ites as well as Shi­ite-Islam­ic mosques and asso­ci­a­tions, up to and includ­ing com­plete con­trol.” Oppo­si­tion­ists repeat­ed­ly report on intim­i­da­tion and repres­sion abroad, too, and Tehran’s long arm reach­es them here too. Accord­ing to the con­sti­tu­tion pro­tec­tion report, the head of the IZH, Moham­mad Hadi Mofat­teh, is con­sid­ered to be the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader Ali Khamenei in Europe. In an inter­view with this news­pa­per last year, Mofat­teh denied the alle­ga­tion that his insti­tu­tion act­ed as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Iran­ian regime in Europe. At the same time, Mofat­teh con­firmed that he was in per­son­al con­tact with Supreme Leader Khamenei. [Trans­lat­ed with Google Translate]

The arti­cle also notes that the IZH is part of Hamburg’s Shu­ra Coun­cil, a part­ner of the city which grants priv­i­leges such as the pro­vi­sion of Islam­ic reli­gious instruction.

Past Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) cov­er­age of West­ern orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als tied to Iran has included:

• In March, we report­ed about an Iran­ian-tied British NGO which called on the UK’s Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary to retract his con­dem­na­tion of the Bat­ley school protests.

• In March, we report­ed about a new glob­al pro-Iran­ian lob­by group that fea­tures Euro­pean and US representatives.

• In Jan­u­ary, we report­ed that the US Jus­tice Depart­ment charged a Mass­a­chu­setts man with act­ing and con­spir­ing to act as an unreg­is­tered agent of Iran.