The residents of the village of Kfar Kila, in southern Lebanon, smoke hookahs in front of a barrier adorned with Hezbollah flags, blocking access to their village, in Burj al-Moulouk, on Jan. 27, 2025. (Credit: Rabih Daher/AFP)
Hezbollah has reportedly established a “secret network” across northern Germany, operating through mosques, scouting groups, and cultural centers according to allegations published by Emirati media The National on Monday. The publication, without specifying the investigation’s timeframe, states that its findings are based on unpublished judicial or intelligence reports, official correspondence, online sources and interviews.
The National supports its claims by citing documented incidents from the past two years. It highlights the arrests of alleged Hezbollah members by German authorities —Hassan M. in May 2023, Fadel Z. in July 2024 and Fadel R. in December 2024 —for their involvement with the party in the Hannover and Bremen regions. Their activities reportedly included financing associations, supporting party-aligned preachers, and purchasing drone components.
Hassan M. was arrested after investigators found “a piece of paper” in his bathroom, allegedly proving he was “at the heart of the network” and directly accountable to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who “closely supervised” the group’s operations.
The arrests of Hassan M. and the “two Fadels,” as The National refers to them, dealt a significant blow to Hezbollah’s network in Germany after years of intelligence monitoring that had failed to curb its activities. The report suggests that the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023 and Hezbollah’s subsequent involvement “prompted authorities to act.”
The article also notes the presence of an al-Mustafa scouting group at the al-Mustafa Islamic Center in Berlin, which it links to Iran, as well as the July 2024 raids on 53 properties associated with the Islamic Center of Hamburg. At the time, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser accused the center of promoting extremist ideology “against human dignity, against women’s rights, against independent justice and against our democratic state” and of “propagating aggressive anti-Semitism.”
According to The National, these organizations functioned as a support network for Hezbollah sympathizers in Germany “in the absence of a national structure.”
‘We are not active in Germany’
Germany’s relationship with Hezbollah has deteriorated since April 30, 2020, when the German government imposed a total ban on the group’s activities, a move long demanded by the United States and Israel. On that day, Germany classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, eliminating the distinction between its political and military wings — a differentiation still maintained by most European countries.
The German Interior Ministry said that “several police actions were carried out in different regions” that day, targeting mosques in Berlin, Bremen, and Münster, as well as a Lebanese emigrants’ center in Dortmund, according to Spiegel and Bild.
Four days later, on May 4, 2020, then-Hezbollah leader Nasrallah dismissed the ban as a “political decision” aimed at appeasing Israel and the United States. “When we say we are not active in Germany, we are 100% sincere,” he said.
Despite Hezbollah’s setbacks in Germany, the targeted organizations “have not yet completely disappeared,” The National reports.
The article also cites Matthew Levitt, a former FBI analyst and author of a book on Hezbollah, who argues that the party’s global activities — including recruitment, ideological dissemination and fundraising — “offer Hezbollah a lifeline at a time when it has suffered a humiliating collapse in Lebanon.”