Germany Captures 25 Members Of The Right Wings Group: Suspected Planned To Overthrow Governments And Armed Attacks

Illustration of the arrest by the German police. (Wikimedia Commons/Dirk Vorderstra Embene)

JAKARTA - German officials on Wednesday detained 25 members and supporters of right-wing groups who prosecutors say are preparing for the overthrow of the country with violence, with some members suspected of planning armed attacks in parliament.

Prosecutors said the group was inspired by the conspiracy theories of QAnon and Reichsbuerger states, which do not recognize modern German legitimacy, insisting that the much larger "Deutsche Reich" still exists even though the Nazis lost in the Second World War.

The plot envisions a former member of the German royal family, identified as the IDXIII P.R. under Germany's privacy law, as the future leader while another suspect, Ruediger v.P., is commander-in-chief of the military, the prosecutor's office said.

It said the telah, yang menggunakan gelar prince dan berasal dari keluarga Kerajaan Reuss, yang telah memerintahkan sebagian Jerman timur, telah menghubungi perwakilan Rusia, yang dilihat kelompok itu sebagai kontak utama untuk membangun kesempatan barunya. Dikatakan tidak ada bukti bahwa perwakilan telah bereaksi positif terhadap permintaan tersebut.

The Russian embassy in Germany was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying Russian diplomatic and consular agencies in Germany did not maintain contact with representatives of terrorist groups and other illegal groups.

Meanwhile, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the government would respond with the rule of law to such attempts against the country, saying further investigations would reveal the extent to which the group's coup plans had developed.

"The investigation provides a glimpse into the terrorist threat from the Reichsbuerger environment," Faeser said in a statement, adding that the constitutional state knows how to defend itself against "democracy enemies".

An active army and several reserves were also among those investigated, a spokesman for military intelligence services told Reuters. The active soldier is a member of the elite KSK Bundeswehr force, which has been overhauled in recent years due to a number of right-wing incidents.

Prosecutors said raids were carried out by more than 3,000 police officers and security forces in 11 German federal states. The suspects were arrested in the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Hesse, Niedersachsen, Saxony, Thuringia in Germany as well as in Austria and Italy, the office said.

Meanwhile, military intelligence services said they had worked with prosecutors in their investigation and shared information with domestic intelligence services and federal criminal investigators ahead of Wednesday's raids.

The detained suspect will appear before a judge at the Federal Court on Wednesday and Thursday, who will issue an arrest warrant and decide on their pre-trial detention.

Investigators suspect individual members of the group have concrete plans to storm the lower house of the Bundestag parliament in Berlin with small armed groups, the prosecutor's office said.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency attributed about 21,000 people to the Reichsbuerger (Resident of Reich) movement, with about 5 percent of them seen as far-right extremists.

About 2,100 Reichsbuerger are ready to use force to achieve their goals, according to the agency's 2021 annual report.