Written by Rachel More
BERLIN (Reuters) – German police have arrested eight suspected members of a neo-Nazi terror group driven by racist ideology and conspiracy theories that were training for the fall of Germany’s modern state, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
News of their arrests came amid a 450-strong police operation to break up the group, dubbed by prosecutors the “Saechsische Separatisten”, or Saxony Separatists, with the abbreviation SS, the same as the Nazi military.
“Thus, our security authorities have thwarted from the beginning the coup plans by right-wing terrorists, who longed for Day X to attack our people and our government with weapons,” said Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser in a statement.
Media reports have linked one of the suspects to the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party – which leads with 18% support in the national election, behind only the centrist opposition – although the party itself has insisted it has nothing to do with it. the group.
This will be the second coup plot exposed in Germany in recent years.
In 2022, the authorities exposed the “Reichsbuerger” organization, led by a would-be prince with ambitions to overthrow the government and install a ruling government, in a case that shocked Germany with its detailed network and planning.
The group targeted for Tuesday’s operation was formed before November 2020, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
“It is a militant group of 15 to 20 people whose views are characterized by racist, anti-Semitic and partly apocalyptic views,” the statement added.
Convinced that Germany was about to fall, with the collapse of the government predicted by an undetermined “X-Day”, the group was training to use force to establish a new system in the east of the country inspired by Nazism, according to investigators.
“If necessary, the bodies of unwanted people must be removed from that area by cleaning up the nation,” said the statement.
PARMILITARY TRAINING
The suspected leader and founding member, identified by German and Polish authorities as 23-year-old Joerg S., was kidnapped in the Polish border town of Zgorzelec.
Seven others were arrested in eastern Germany, in cities near Leipzig, Dresden and Meissen.
The suspects, who prosecutors say were trained in urban warfare and received fatigues and bulletproof vests, could be charged with participating in a domestic terrorist organization, in some cases under the juvenile law.
Spiegel Online reported that one of the suspects was Kurt Haettasch, an AfD politician in the eastern state of Saxony where the party nearly won federal elections in September.
He is a member of the elected council in Grimma, near Leipzig, according to the city’s website. Spiegel also said that he had been the treasurer of the AfD youth organization Junge Alternative in Saxony since October.
The AfD’s youth wing has been described as a dangerous organization by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, which also monitors the AfD at the national level for alleged extremism.
“Our party stands firmly on the basis of freedom and democracy,” said an AfD spokesman, adding that the party had “nothing in common” with groups like the Saxony Separatists.
The AfD said it could not confirm the Spiegel report that Haettasch was among the suspects.
According to a Handelsblatt report citing security sources, a local politician confronted the police with a gun during a police operation, after which the officer fired two warning shots. Haettasch reportedly suffered a broken jaw.
A spokesperson for the public prosecutor confirmed that someone was injured and said that the investigation is ongoing.
