The police dismantled a terrorist network which prepared several armed attacks, notably against the Bundestag.
by Thomas Wieder (Berlin, correspondent)
This is one of the largest operations in the German police for many years. The day was not yet lifted on Wednesday, December 7, when more than 3,000 police officers led a large net against a far -right terrorist network whose members are suspected of having prepared several armed attacks, notably against the Bundestag.
In total, twenty-five people were arrested in eleven of the country’s sixteen Länder and more than 130 dwellings, offices and warehouses were searched, including the Bundeswehr special forces commando, located in Calw ( Baden-Wurtemberg), in southwest Germany.
According to information from the Spiegel, the members of this terrorist network are linked to the Reichsbürger (“citizens of the Reich”), a movement that appeared in the 1980s whose members do not recognize the legitimacy of the institutions of Federal Germany, advocate the restoration of the Empire (the Reich) and refuse to obey the state police and pay taxes, fines and social contributions. The group – a nebula rather than a solidly structured organization – would have around 15,000 members across the country.
According to several media, two personalities from this movement, which has never hidden its seditious vylleities, were arrested in particular. The first is a former paratrooper commander, Rüdiger von P., aged 69. The second is the descendant of an old family of the German aristocracy, known as Henri XIII, Prince Reuss, 71 years old and living in Thuringia, a region of former Eastern Germany where the ‘extreme right is strongly established and solidly organized.
anti -Semitism
Unknown to the general public, Prince Reuss, whose genealogy gives him a certain aura among the Reichsbürger, has never hidden his detestation from republican institutions or his anti -Semitism. According to investigators, these two men were the bridgeheads of a vast network whose main objective was to organize an armed assault against the Bundestag, even if other actions were planned, in particular the removal of several managers politicians. To this end, they would have sought in particular to ensure support within the police and the army. Four meetings were reportedly organized in Baden-Wurtemberg during the summer, Rüdiger von P. being suspected of having visited various times in northern Germany, this fall, to recruit police officers.
Once their coup d’etat has been successful, the group would even have imagined to place Prince Reuss prince at the head of the new German government. According to investigators, the septuagenarian tried to ensure the support of Russia, relying on his young companion, named Vitalia and 39 years old. At this stage, the survey did not make it possible to establish whether contacts were effectively established with Moscow or if they were only fomented projects by this group of conspirators.
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