BERLIN, Germany
Thousands of police officers carried out raids across much of Germany on Wednesday against suspected far-right extremists who allegedly sought to overthrow the government in an armed coup. Officials said 25 people were detained.
Federal prosecutors said some
3,000 officers conducted searches at 130 sites in 11 of Germany’s 16 states.
While police raids against the far right are not
uncommon in
the country — still sensitive to its grim Nazi past — the scale of the
operation was unusual.
Justice Minister Marco Buschmann
described the raids as an “anti-terrorism operation,” adding that the suspects
may have planned an armed attack on institutions of the state.
Germany’s top security
official said the group was “driven by violent coup fantasies and conspiracy
ideologies.”
Prosecutors said the suspects
were linked to the so-called Reich Citizens movement, whose adherents reject
Germany’s postwar constitution and have called for bringing down the
government.
Officers detained 22 German
citizens on suspicion of “membership in a terrorist organization,” prosecutors
said. Three other people, including a Russian citizen, were held on suspicion
of supporting the organization, they said. Another 27 people were under
investigation.
German media outlet Der Spiegel
reported the searched locations included the barracks of Germany’s special
forces unit KSK in the southwestern town of Calw. The unit received scrutiny in
the past over alleged far-right involvement by some soldiers.
Federal prosecutors declined
to confirm or deny that the barracks was searched.
Along with detentions in
Germany, prosecutors said one person was detained in the Austrian town of
Kitzbuehel and another in the Italian city of Perugia.Masked police officers lead Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, center, to a police vehicle during a raid against so-called 'Reich citizens' in Frankfurt, Germany, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022
Prosecutors said those
detained are alleged to have last year formed a “terrorist organization with
the goal of overturning the existing state order in Germany and replace it with
their own form of state, which was already in the course of being founded.”
The suspects were aware their
aim could only be achieved by military means and with force, prosecutors said.
Some of the group’s members
had made “concrete preparations” to storm Germany’s federal parliament with a
small armed group, according to prosecutors. “The details (of this plan) still
need to be investigated” to determine whether any of the suspects can be
charged with treason, they said.
The group is alleged to have
believed in a “conglomerate of conspiracy theories consisting of narratives
from the so-called Reich Citizens as well as QAnon
ideology,” according to the statement. Prosecutors added that members of
the group also believe Germany is ruled by a so-called “deep state;” similar
baseless claims about the United States were made
by former President Donald Trump.
Prosecutors identified the
suspected ringleaders as Heinrich XIII P. R. and Ruediger v. P., in line with
German privacy rules. Der Spiegel reported that the former was a well-known
71-year-old member of a minor German noble family, while the latter was a
69-year-old former paratrooper.
Federal prosecutors said
Heinrich XIII P. R., whom the group planned to install as Germany’s new leader,
had contacted Russian officials with the aim of negotiating a new order in the
country once the German government was overthrown. He was allegedly assisted in
this by a Russian woman, Vitalia B.
“According to current
investigations there is no indication however that the persons contacted
responded positively to his request,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors identified another
individual detained by police Wednesday as Birgit M.-W. Der Spiegel reported
she is a judge and former lawmaker with the far-right
Alternative for Germany party.
The party, known by its German
acronym AfD, has increasingly come
under scrutiny by German security services due to its ties with
extremists.
AfD’s co-leaders, Tino
Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, condemned the reported plans, which they said they
had only learned of through the media.
“We have full confidence in
the authorities involved and demand a swift and comprehensive investigation,”
they said in a statement.
Prosecutors said that apart
from a council of leaders, or Rat, the group had tasked several members with
the formation of an armed wing. Led by Ruediger v. P., they planned to obtain
weapons and conduct firearms training.
Wednesday’s raids showed that
“we know how to defend ourselves with full force against the enemies of
democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said.
“The investigation offers an
insight into the depths of the terrorist threat within the Reich Citizens
milieu,” Faeser said. “Only the further investigation will provide a clear
picture of how far the coup plans had come.”
Sara Nanni, a Green party
lawmaker, suggested the group may not have been very capable.
“More details keep coming to
light that raise doubts about whether these people were even clever enough to
plan and carry out such a coup,” Nanni said in a post on the social network
Mastodon. “The fact is: no matter how crude their ideas are and how hopeless
their plans, even the attempt is dangerous!”
Officials
have repeatedly warned that far-right extremists pose the biggest
threat to Germany’s domestic security. This threat was highlighted by the
killing of a regional politician and the deadly attack on a synagogue
in 2019. A year later, far-right extremists taking part in a protest against
the country’s pandemic restrictions tried
and failed to storm the Bundestag building in Berlin.
Faeser announced earlier this
year that the government planned to disarm
about 1,500 suspected extremists and to tighten background checks for
those wanting to acquire guns as part of a broader crackdown on the far right.
Germany’s chief federal
prosecutor planned to make a statement on the case later Wednesday. - AP
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