German police on Wednesday arrested 25 members of right-wing terror group Reichsbürger for allegedly plotting an attack on the Parliament to overthrow the government.
Intelligence received before the raid warned that the members were armed with weapons, of which a few were legally owned. Security officials also found a list of 18 politicians the group considered enemies, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
3,000 security personnel from the Federal Police’s antiterrorism unit, GSG 9, and several other special forces of German states carried out 150 raids across 11 of Germany’s 16 states. German authorities also conducted operations in Austria and Italy. All those arrested were Germans, excluding one Russian woman. There are also 27 more suspects.
German Federal Prosecutor General Peter Frank has launched an investigation into Reichsbürger and has already accused over 50 men and women of forming a terror group to disrupt constitutional order.
In a statement, Frank’s office said, “The accused are united by a deep rejection of state institutions and the free democratic basic order of the Federal Republic of Germany, which over time has led to their decision to participate in their violent elimination and to engage in concrete preparatory actions for this purpose.”
🚨 Massive raid by 3000 police officers in Germany to stop right-wing conspiracy group that reportedly was planning a coup. Former soldiers, AfD politicians and a prince involved. Possible connections to Russia. 🚨
— Jan Fichtner (@fichtner_jan) December 7, 2022
👀 crazy stuff. https://t.co/cQ6aTOAULo
Authorities believe that Reichsbürger wants to form a new state, similar to the German Reich of 1871, rejecting the post-World War II constitution.
Intelligence determined that the group planned to attack the parliament building (known as the Reichstag) and the national power grid. These attacks would have formed a part of a series of attacks in their attempt to spark a civil war, which they have been plotting since November 2021.
Investigators said that the members were influenced by the conspiracy group QAnon, which has members across the United States and Europe and which is said to have played a leading role in rallying Trump supporters to storm the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection last year.
QAnon gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic and advocates against the alleged “deep state.” According to the New York Times, the QAnon group believes the “world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles.”
German extremists networks may be small and splintered. But today's police raid on them was one of the biggest in modern German history - a warning sign that Germany’s conspiracy theorists are beginning to get organised.
— Katja Hoyer (@hoyer_kat) December 7, 2022
My piece @spectatorhttps://t.co/AqG7v4wCXo
Reichsbürger allegedly has around 21,000 followers, of which 5% believe in the far-right ideology. They reject the notion of modern-day German democracy and refuse to pay taxes.
According to Hajo Funke, a political scientist in Berlin, authorities have largely “downplayed” the danger posed by the group, as they believed that the right-wing ideology had limited influence.
That being said, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser revealed that Wednesday’s raids were conducted after a plot to attack German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach uncovered the danger of Reichsbürger.
The group has two arms: the council, run by German Royal Heinrich Reuss, and the military arm, run by Rüdiger von P, a former military official.
Council leader Reuss, 71, calls himself Prince Heinrich XIII and has for years rallied against the alleged illegitimacy of the current government and advocated for a return to the 19th-century royal lineage. For instance, he declared during a forum in 2019 in Switzerland that the German government is controlled by the Western allies from World War II. Other videos of his theories refer to the German government and the judiciary as “companies.”
Reuss allegedly attempted to contact representatives of the Russian government through its embassy in Berlin. It remains unclear whether he received a positive response from Moscow.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri S. Peskov, however, rubbished claims of links to Russia and said that the issue is an “internal problem of the FRG (Germany) and they themselves state that there can be no question of any Russian intervention.”
German law enforcement launched raids across the country Wednesday and detained 25 people suspected of links to a domestic terrorist group, including one Russian https://t.co/mHB9Z9JFWZ via @bpolitics @mcnienaber
— Robert Jameson (@rhjameson) December 7, 2022
The Prosecutor’s Office claimed that the group had already formed a “shadow cabinet,” indicating the seriousness of the plot.
Investigators believe that Reichsbürger includes former far-right parliamentarian Birgit Malsack-Winkemann from the AfD, who has been serving as a judge in Berlin after leaving parliament last year. Local government authorities have tried to force her to step down over her anti-democratic statements. However, these attempts have failed. He was touted as a justice minister in the Reichsbürger shadow cabinet.
The group’s military arm, too, is allegedly composed of former military special forces. A former German paratrooper who commanded a battalion in the 1990s, and was previously removed from the armed forces for stealing weapons from the military, was also arrested in the raid.
Reichsbürger has also frequently targeted the judiciary, police, and military for recruitment.
Investigators said that the operations were unprecedented and went “beyond all dimensions in terms of scope.” Justice Minister Marco Buschmann noted that the “major anti-terror operation” showed that “democracy is defensible.”
The detainees will now face the test of German courts, which will now decide whether the individuals can be held in pre-trial detention.
Konstantin von Notz, a parliamentarian and member of the parliamentary committee on intelligence oversight, has raised concern about the rise of right-wing attacks and the ideology’s growing popularity in Germany. He said, “The number of these cases are piling up and the question is to what extent are they connected.”
In June 2020, a mass shooting orchestrated by a gunman motivated by right-wing ideology killed nine people in Frankfurt.