Germany’s attorney general announced this Wednesday that it had dismantled a cell belonging to a far-right group preparing armed attacks, including against parliament, in an operation that led to the arrest of 25 people.
Prosecutors said in a statement that the detainees are suspected of making “concrete preparations to forcefully enter the Bundestag,” the lower house of Germany’s parliament, with a small armed group.
About 3,000 officers took part in the police operation, which saw 130 locations in 11 of Germany’s 16 states searched against the Citizens of the Reich movement.
The group, which rejects the constitution introduced after World War II and calls for the overthrow of the government, will be formed by 2021.
German police arrested 25 people in a large-scale nationwide operation against a far-right group preparing an armed attack on the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, the tax office reports #AFP pic.twitter.com/sGOMK67Rjs
– Agence France-Presse (@AFPespanol) December 7, 2022
The German Attorney General’s Office said 22 Germans had been detained on suspicion of “membership in a terrorist organization”. Three other people, including a Russian, are suspected of supporting the organization.
One person was arrested in the Austrian city of Kitzbühel and another in the Italian city of Perugia, the statement said.
According to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, the headquarters of the KSK, the German special unit, in the southwestern city of Calw, among others, were searched.
The KSK has been the target of investigations in the past for alleged far-right sympathizers among its soldiers.
Members of Citizens of the Reich believe in a “series of conspiracy theories,” including “QAnon ideology,” according to German prosecutors.
QAnon is the profile name of an anonymous user who posted false information on an internet forum, claiming to have access to security agency data in the United States about a group led by a corrupt elite formed by Satanist pedophiles who abducted and sacrificed children.
This theory has many supporters in the American Republican Party.
Source: DN
