Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Volker Beck, a Green party politician who leads the German-Israeli Society, had both been reconnoitred as potential targets, a Hamburg court found.
The Hamburg Higher Regional Court sentenced two men on Thursday for planning attacks in Germany on behalf of Iran's secret service. Both were convicted of espionage and attempted murder.
The defendants, whose identities have not been disclosed, lived in Denmark. One was a Danish citizen and the other an Afghan citizen, and both had been contracted by Iranian authorities.
The 54-year-old, who had Danish nationality and Afghan roots, received orders directly from officers of the Al-Kuds-Brigaden, the foreign unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, according to the Bundesanwaltschaft, Germany's Federal Prosecutor's Office.
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The court found that the men had watched Schuster and Beck, who is president of the German-Israeli Society, as they prepared their planned attacks.
The 54-year-old also prepared for an arson attack on a kosher food store in Berlin.
He then contacted the 43-year-old, seeking to recruit him to attack Beck or to find another person who would do so. The two men eventually agreed to look for somebody else to carry out an attack on Beck.
The court sentenced the 54-year-old, whom it identified as the mastermind of the plot, to eight and a half years in prison. The 43-year-old received four and a half years.
The sentences matched those sought by the Federal Prosecutor's Office. Defence lawyers had asked for acquittals.
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