A German official and a lawmaker said investigators may have detected real plotting, drunken fantasizing, or both. Regardless, Germany takes any right-wing threat seriously and thousands of police officers carried out pre-dawn raids across much of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re talking about a group that, according to what we know so far, planned to violently abolish our democratic state of law and an armed attack,\u201don the German parliament building, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sara Nanni, a lawmaker with the Green party, part of the German government, suggested the group may not have been capable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMore details keep coming to light that raise doubts about whether these people were even clever enough to plan and carry out such a coup,\u201d Nanni said in a post on the social network Mastodon. \u201cThe fact is: no matter how crude their ideas are and how hopeless their plans, even the attempt is dangerous!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Federal prosecutors said the group is alleged to have believed in a \u201cconglomerate of conspiracy theories consisting of narratives from the so-called Reich Citizens as well as\u00a0QAnon ideology.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201d Adherents of the Reich Citizens movement reject Germany\u2019s postwar constitution and have called for bringing down the government, while QAnon is a global conspiracy theory with roots in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Reich Citizens scene has been under observation by Germany\u2019s domestic intelligence agency since 2016. Authorities estimate that the loose-knit movement has about 21,000 adherents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prosecutors said the suspects also believe Germany is ruled by a so-called \u201cdeep state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the alleged ringleaders arrested Wednesday is Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, a 71-year-old member of the House of Reuss who continues to use the title despite Germany abolishing any formal role for royalty more than a century ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Federal prosecutors said Reuss, whom the group planned to install as Germany\u2019s new leader, had contacted Russian officials with the aim of imposing a new order in the country once the German government was overthrown. There is no indication that the Russians responded positively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thousands of police officers carried out raids across much of Germany on Wednesday against suspected far-right extremists who allegedly sought to overthrow the government in an armed coup, federal prosecutors said. (Dec. 7)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Police also detained Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a judge and former lawmaker with the far-right Alternative for Germany party<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Alternative for Germany, which is known by its acronym AfD, has increasingly come under scrutiny by security services<\/strong> due to its ties with extremists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n AfD\u2019s co-leaders, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel said they had only learned of the alleged coup plans through the media, and condemned them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have full confidence in the authorities involved and demand a swift and comprehensive investigation,\u201d they said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chief federal prosecutor Peter Frank said some 3,000 officers were involved in the raids conducted at 150 sites in 11 of Germany\u2019s 16 states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Officers detained 22 German citizens on suspicion of \u201cmembership in a terrorist organization,\u201d prosecutors said. Three other people, including a Russian citizen, were held on suspicion of supporting the organization, they said. An additional 27 people were under investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of those arrested was a soldier serving on the support staff for Germany\u2019s special forces unit KSK in the southwestern town of Calw. The unit has received scrutiny<\/strong> over what officials called some soldiers\u2019 far-right beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with detentions in Germany, prosecutors said one person was detained in the Austrian town of Kitzbuehel and another in Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The latter suspect, a 64-year-old German citizen who is a former officer in the German army special forces, is accused of being part of a criminal organization that aimed to \u201csubvert the German democratic order by any means \u2013 including criminal \u2013 and replace it with another unidentified form of state,\u201d police said in a statement, adding that extradition proceedings were underway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOf course, there are many people who grandstand and tell confused tales stories after drinking alcohol,\u201d German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said. \u201cIn this case, however, there were such strong suspicions that the group wanted to take violent action that the investigating judge at the Federal Supreme Court ordered the investigative measures to be taken.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the group\u2019s members had made \u201cconcrete preparations\u201d to storm Germany\u2019s federal parliament with a small armed group, according to prosecutors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wednesday\u2019s raids showed that \u201cwe know how to defend ourselves with full force against the enemies of democracy,\u201d Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe investigation offers an insight into the depths of the terrorist threat within the Reich Citizens milieu,\u201d Faeser said. \u201cOnly the further investigation will provide a clear picture of how far the coup plans had come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Officials have repeatedly warned<\/strong> that far-right extremists pose the biggest threat to Germany\u2019s domestic security. This threat was highlighted by the killing of a regional politician<\/strong> and the deadly attack on a synagogue in 2019. A year later, far-right extremists taking part in a protest against the country\u2019s pandemic restrictions tried and failed to storm the Bundestag<\/strong> building in Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faeser announced this year that the government planned to disarm about 1,500 suspected extremists<\/strong> and to tighten background checks for those wanting to acquire guns as part of a broader crackdown on the far right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" German police rounded up dozens of people including a self-styled prince, paratrooper and a former judge Wednesday, accusing the suspects of discussing the violent overthrow of the government but leaving unclear how concrete the plans were. A German official and a lawmaker said investigators may have detected real plotting, drunken fantasizing, or both. Regardless, Germany […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":28251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11261,6612,8217,6975,5304,8989,7960,11254,11555,8032,6578,6731,8879,10507,11996,11337,11606,913,9387,8880,7209,8008,13059,66,2264,3722,10197,1392,12005,10419,10454,10342,8529,12287,11973,7980,5485,1198,421,5561,5217,3852,5655,1383,9832,5618,7972,8840,1825,11263,7609,9262,3954,594],"class_list":["post-28250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-accused","tag-alcohol","tag-army","tag-arrest","tag-attack","tag-berlin","tag-case","tag-citizen","tag-citizens","tag-conspiracy","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-coup","tag-coup-plot","tag-court","tag-crackdown","tag-demand","tag-democracy","tag-democratic","tag-detained","tag-ex-judge","tag-extradition","tag-far-right","tag-german-police","tag-germany","tag-government","tag-guns","tag-investigation","tag-italy","tag-judge","tag-justice","tag-killing","tag-law","tag-mastodon","tag-movement","tag-one","tag-overthrow","tag-pandemic","tag-parliament","tag-police","tag-protest","tag-russian","tag-russians","tag-security","tag-security-services","tag-soldier","tag-soldiers","tag-storm","tag-strong","tag-supreme-court","tag-synagogue","tag-terrorist","tag-united-states","tag-will","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51058,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28250\/revisions\/51058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.jwplayer.com\/v2\/media\/TzhsIiKd\/poster.jpg\")
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