{"id":191200,"date":"2025-12-14T10:25:05","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T10:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/191200\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T10:25:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T10:25:05","slug":"five-arrested-over-plot-to-attack-german-christmas-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/191200\/","title":{"rendered":"Five arrested over plot to attack German Christmas market"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five men have been arrested in Germany suspected of being involved in a plot to drive a vehicle into people at a Christmas market.<\/p>\n

Three Moroccans, an Egyptian and a Syrian were detained on Friday over the plan to target a market in the southern Bavarian state. Authorities said they suspected an “Islamist motive”.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said the Egyptian – a 56-year-old – was alleged to have “called for a vehicle attack… with the aim of killing or injuring as many people as possible”. The Moroccans allegedly agreed to carry out the attack.<\/p>\n

Officials in Germany have been on high alert after previous attacks at Christmas markets, including in Magdeburg last December that killed six people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Authorities did not say when the planned attack was supposed to take place or which market was the target, though said they believed it to be one in the Dingolfing-Landau area, north east of Munich.<\/p>\n

German newspaper Bild reported the Egyptian man was an imam at a mosque in the area.<\/p>\n

Police said the Moroccan men – aged 30, 28 and 22 – were arrested accused of having agreed to commit murder, while the Syrian man, a 37-year-old, was accused of encouraging the suspects “in their decision to commit the crime”.<\/p>\n

The five suspects appeared before a magistrate on Saturday and remain in custody.<\/p>\n

Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria’s state interior minister, told Bild the “excellent cooperation between our security services” had helped to prevent “a potentially Islamist-motivated attack”.<\/p>\n

Christmas markets are popular festive attractions throughout Germany, frequently attracting large crowds and significant tourism.<\/p>\n

Security at events has been increased in recent years, since an attack in Berlin in 2016 when a man drove a lorry into a market crowd, killing 12 people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five men have been arrested in Germany suspected of being involved in a plot to drive a vehicle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-191200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}