Berlin — Police have arrested at least 25 people linked to an alleged far-right plot to overthrow the German government. The group targeted in around 130 raids across Germany have been described by prosecutors as being influenced by QAnon conspiracy theories and espousing a doctrine similar to that of far-right groups in the United States and across Europe.
The German Federal Attorney General is currently investigating the suspected right-wing terrorist group, which calls itself Reichsbürger, for allegedly planning an attack on the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, as part of a violent coup aimed at overthrowing the government.
The investigators’ trail leads to a member of a former German royal family as an alleged figurehead, a former parliamentarian from the AfD far-right political partyand of particular concern to investigators, former members of the German army special forces.
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Current members of Germany’s special security services struck in the early hours of Wednesday morning in what was a series of potentially dangerous raids.
Forces stormed apartments across the country, executing 25 arrest warrants and launching an extensive search.
While only 25 people were detained, the federal prosecutor’s office charged around 50 men and women with forming a terrorist organization with the aim of eliminating the constitutional order of the Federal Republic of Germany and establish a new state on the model of the German Reich of 1871.
The group is accused of planning to storm the Reichstag, or parliament building, as part of a wave of attacks aimed at precipitating civil war conditions in Germany. He also reportedly planned to attack the national power grid, overthrow the federal government, and seize power by force.
The prosecutor’s office said the group had already selected members for important ministerial posts in the new regime, from the time of the “seizure”.
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Investigators described the operation against the group as unprecedented in Germany: “Beyond all dimensions in terms of scale”.
Since a significant number of suspected members of the group are former soldiers of the German armed forces, including special forces, it has been treated as a particularly dangerous organization. Investigators had indications before the raids that the suspects were armed with various weapons, some of which were legally owned.
In view of security concerns, in addition to special teams from the Federal Police’s counter-terrorism unit GSG 9, officers from several German state special forces (SEK) were also deployed to carry out the arrests and provide security during the searches. In total, around 3,000 members of the security forces carried out the raids.
The central figure in the group is Heinrich Reuss, who calls himself Prince Heinrich XIII. He is the scion of a long-established but minor German royal family from present-day Thuringia in eastern Germany. The 71-year-old has for several years publicly defended his “Reichsbürger” theses, which suggest that the modern German state is illegitimate and that the old royal line of the 19th century must be restored to power.
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In 2019, for example, he told a forum in Switzerland that the Federal Republic was not a sovereign state, but still controlled by the Western allies of World War II. In another video still circulating online, he refers to the German state and the country’s judiciary as “corporations”.
Reuss has been nominated by the Reichsbürger terror group targeted in Wednesday’s raids to become the state’s new regent after it took control of the country, investigators said. Reuss works as an independent financial adviser in Frankfurt and owns a hunting lodge in Thuringia. The band members reportedly met at the lodge several times during that year.
A kind of “ghost cabinet” would have formed, with Reuss at its head.
Particularly explosive was the allegation that the group intended to install former AfD member of the Bundestag, Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, as head of a new national justice department. She has worked as a judge in Berlin since leaving the Bundestag last year. Previous attempts by the Berlin regional senate to have her removed as a judge, due to undemocratic and political statements she made from the bench, failed.
One of the main suspects swept up in the raids was Rüdiger von P., who commanded a battalion of German paratroopers in the early 1990s until it was absorbed into the then newly created National Commando Special Forces (KSK). He was fired from the Bundeswehr at the time after being found guilty of stealing weapons from army stocks.
Some alleged members of the group had previously made public appearances as agitators during recent protests against Germany’s anti-coronavirus measures. For example, a former military colonel and special forces member named by prosecutors as Maximilian E. publicly advocated at a protest to send in German special forces to “clean up the mess” in the national government.
Due to the large number of suspects and the large number of arrest warrants executed on Wednesday, the raids will represent a considerable logistical challenge for the judicial and law enforcement authorities involved. All those arrested must now be brought before an investigating judge by the end of the following day, Thursday, in accordance with German law. It will be up to these judges to decide whether individuals can be remanded in custody.
