According to the investigation, the commando dismantled last week did not only plan to seize the Bundestag, he had also established a list of targets including the German Chancellor and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock.
by Thomas Wieder (Berlin, correspondent)
It has only been a week since the dismantling of the far right cell which planned a coup in Germany. But the investigation has advanced enough to have an already precise idea of what the twenty-five people arrested on Wednesday, December 7, by the German police.
It is first of all the identity of conspirators that we know more precisely. On the day of the thread, the attention of the media focused on three personalities: Prince Heinrich XIII von Reuss, a septuagenarian descending from an old aristocratic family of Thuringia, supposed to take the head of the government at the end of the Putsch; Birgit unhealthy-winkemann, a Berlin magistrate, deputy for the far-right AFD party from 2017 to 2021, to whom the Ministry of Justice was to be entrusted; and Rüdiger von Pescatore, a former paratrooper in charge of the military component of the operation.
A week later, the rest of the group is better known. Among those arrested, there is a member of the Bundeswehr Special Forces Commando (KSK), two retired officers, a former Hanover policeman, Michael Fritsch, candidate in the 2021 legislative elections under the Die Basis banner (“The Base “) – A small party created during the Pandemic of COVID -19 by opponents of restrictions and vaccines. Also, a fairly in view of Munich cook, Frank Heppner, arrested in a luxury hotel in Kitzbühel (Austria), who was to ensure the refueling of the putschists, or two former mayors of small towns located in the south of Saxony, Near the Czech border – Christian Wendler, a landscaper inserted at AFD, and Frank Richter, a mechanic practicing naturopathy, member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
As the federal prosecutor’s office revealed a few hours after the thread, this little world had the planned to seize the Bundestag. Since then, we have learned that the conspirators also had personalities in their viewfinder, without anyone knowing what a fate would have been reserved for them.
“Citizens of the Reich”
According to several media, the investigators thus got their hands on a list of eighteen names in particular the Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, the President and the Secretary General of the Social Party -Démocrat (SPD), Saskia Esken and Kevin Kühnert, the president of the Christian Democrat Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz, the former CDU candidate for Chancellery Armin Laschet, as well as three star presenters of public television .
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