Five charged in German far-right plot to kidnap minister, trigger civil war

Berlin: German prosecutors have charged five suspects in a plot to kidnap the country’s health minister, stir civil unrest and violently overthrow the government.

The public prosecutor said the group had planned to blow up power infrastructure, “trigger civil-war-like conditions” and overthrow democracy. All five have been charged with being suspected members of a terrorist group and planning “highly treasonable” acts against the government.

Two of the suspects face additional charges of preparing a “serious act of violence that is dangerous to the state,” while another also faces a charge of terrorist financing.

Demonstrators kneel in front of a police chain in Frankfurt, Germany, in December 2021. Several hundred participants, including members of the cross-thinkers and Reichsbürger scene, had gathered in the city centre to protest COVID regulations.Credit:dpa/AP

The group intended to use an actor to imitate the country’s president or chancellor in a live television broadcast and announce that the federal government had been deposed and that the constitution of 1871 was in force again, the indictment said.

It was the latest twist in the country’s investigations into its extremist Reichsbürger movement, which rejects the modern German state and wants to return to the days of the German Empire or Second Reich, founded in the late 19th century. The suspects also have links to the “corona [virus] protest scene” and had planned to kidnap Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and subject him to a show trial, prosecutors have previously said.

German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach arrives for a press conference in Berlin last year. The group is accused of plotting his kidnapping.Credit:AP

It was the investigation into the cell and its members’ arrests last year that led authorities to unearth a similar plot in December, security officials have said. In that case, a 71-year-old minor German aristocrat, Heinrich XIII, Prince of Reuss, and 24 others were arrested and accused of plotting to overthrow the state and storm its parliament building, known as the Reichstag.

All suspects arrested in that case remain in custody as investigations continue, with one awaiting extradition from Italy, the prosecutor’s office said.

Security authorities have warned of the increasingly violent strands of parts of the Reichsbürger movement, which has long existed but whose members have often been written off as cranks. During the pandemic, street protests brought together a mix of Reichsbürgers, right-wing extremists and coronavirus deniers, leading to warnings from security officials about radicalisation.

In 2021, the movement was estimated to include about 21,000 people nationwide, according to a report by the domestic intelligence agency, which estimated that about 10 per cent of them were “violence-oriented”.

The Reichstag building at the German parliament, Bundestag, in Berlin. The group planned to install its own government.Credit:AP

The group of five suspects charged on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) – four men and one woman – had formed by mid-January of last year at the latest, prosecutors said. They believed it was an ideology largely shaped by the female suspect, named as Elisabeth R.

The group made “concrete preparations” to take over state power, according to the prosecutor’s office. Suspects Sven B, Thomas K and Thomas O had organised themselves into a “military branch”, while Elisabeth R and Michael H were involved in an “administrative branch”, it said.

After damaging power supply facilities, the group planned to kidnap Lauterbach, “possibly after killing his bodyguards,” the indictment said. The group hoped that the civil-war-like conditions that ensued would enable them to depose the government and install a new leader while they assumed executive roles.

The first four arrests were made in April after an undercover operation in which officers posed as weapons dealers. Raids on 21 houses and apartments across nine German states led to the seizure of weapons, including an assault rifle, 14 rifles and seven handguns, authorities said. They also said they had seized gold bars, silver coins and more than $US20,000 in cash.

Elisabeth R was arrested in October. All the suspects remain in custody.

The Washington Post

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