In a nationwide raid, 25 suspected members and supporters of a terrorist organization were arrested early Wednesday.
Officials said the network, which is part of a larger right-wing movement, was already well established with a concrete plan to overthrow the German state by force and install a new government.
What we know so far
The raids were announced by the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office and German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann. Buschmann said the investigations were directed against an alleged terrorist network with known links to the Reichsbürger movement. He said the raids took place against individuals suspected of planning an armed attack on state institutions.
“As of this morning, an extensive counterterrorism operation has been underway. The Federal Attorney General is investigating a suspected terrorist network at the scene of the Reichsbürger,” Buschmann wrote. “The suspicion exists that an armed attack against the constitutional bodies was planned.”
The search operation reportedly covered 130 properties belonging to 52 suspects in 11 German states.
According to prosecution officials, the arrested suspects “belong to a terrorist organization founded at the end of November 2021 at the latest, which has set itself the goal of overthrowing the existing state order in Germany and replacing it with its own form of state. , which has already been broadly drawn up.”
Of the 25 men and women arrested, 24 were from Germany and one suspected supporter is from Russia. One arrest took place in Austria and one in Italy. There are 27 other suspects, the federal prosecutor’s office said.
Two leaders identified
Prosecutors identified the alleged ringleaders only as Heinrich XIII PR and Ruediger v. P., in accordance with German privacy regulations. The news newspaper The Spiegel reported that the former was a 71-year-old well-known member of a minor German noble family, while the latter was a 69-year-old former paratrooper.
Prosecutors said Heinrich XIII PR, whom the group planned to install as Germany’s new leader, made contact with Russian officials seeking to establish a new order in Germany once the government in Berlin was overthrown. A Russian woman, Vitalia B, would have helped him with this. The Russian embassy in Berlin denied having links with far-right terrorist groups.
A soldier currently serving in the Bundeswehr Special Forces Command (KSK) as well as several Bundeswehr reservists are also among the suspects in the case, a spokesman for the German Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) said. to the DPA news agency. A search was reportedly carried out at the soldier’s home and at his barracks office in the Land of Baden-Württemberg.
The trigger for the raids was an investigation into another Reichsbürger group that planned to kidnap German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the case revealed the threat posed by the Reichsbürger movement.
“The investigations provide a glimpse into the abyss of a terrorist threat from the scene of the Reichsbürger,” Faeser said in a statement. “We know how to defend ourselves with all our might against the enemies of democracy,” she added.
The speaker of the lower house of the German parliament, Bärbel Bas, said the operation shows “that our democratic rule of law is attentive and capable of action”.
Belief in violence to overthrow the ‘deep state’
The group had targeted members of the Bundeswehr and police for their desire to win their targets. He had formed a “military arm” and a council chaired by Heinrich XIII PR
To implement their plans, members of the group were prepared to use military means and violence against state officials and were prepared to kill to achieve their goals. According to investigators, members of the group “followed a conglomeration of conspiracy myths comprised of accounts of the so-called ‘Reichsbürger’ as well as QAnon ideology.”
Prosecutors added that the group’s supporters believe Germany is ruled by a so-called “deep state,” similar to baseless claims about the United States made by former President Donald Trump.
The Reichsbürger movement is made up of a number of small organizations and individuals, primarily in the states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Bavaria. They do not accept the legality of the Federal Republic of Germany or any of its governmental authorities.
The movement argues that Germany’s pre-World War II constitution was never properly overturned and that the formation of the former West Germany in 1949, and now reunited Germany, was therefore never valid.
rc/msh (AFP, Reuters, dpa)
