Thousands of police yesterday carried out a series of raids across much of Germany against people who allegedly sought to overthrow the state in an armed coup.
Federal prosecutors said that about 3,000 officers conducted searches at 130 sites in 11 of Germany’s 16 states against adherents of the so-called Reich Citizens movement.
Some members of the grouping reject Germany’s post-World War II constitution and have called for the government to be overthrown.
Photo: AFP
The raids were an “anti-terrorism operation,” German Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann said, adding that the suspects might have planned an armed attack on institutions of the state.
Prosecutors said that 22 German citizens were detained on suspicion of “membership in a terrorist organization.”
Three other people, including a Russian citizen, are suspected of supporting the organization, they said.
Weekly news magazine Der Spiegel reported that locations searched included the barracks of the German Special Forces Command in the southwestern town of Calw.
Federal prosecutors declined to confirm or deny that the barracks was searched.
Along with detentions in Germany, one person was detained in the Austrian town of Kitzbuehel and another in the Italian city of Perugia, prosecutors said.
Those detained are alleged to last year have 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,” prosecutors said.
The suspects were aware that their aim could only be achieved by military means and with force, prosecutors said.
They are alleged to have believed in a “conglomerate of conspiracy theories consisting of narratives from the so-called Reich Citizens as well as QAnon ideology,” prosecutors said in a statement.
Members of the group also believe Germany is ruled by a so-called “deep state,” they said.
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 that 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.
A further person detained by police yesterday was identified by prosecutors as Birgit M-W.
Der Spiegel reported that the woman is a judge and former lawmaker with the Alternative for Germany.
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