Number of suspects over 52, 23 of whom are most recently in police custody, and planned police raids
Germany is going to gauge the risk of approaching the state through the right-wing terror network revealed on Wednesday, as police made new arrests in connection with the coup plot.
In its largest raid ever against right-wing extremists, the German government arrested another 25 people suspected of plotting to overthrow the government, install a shadow regime run by a 71-year-old aristocrat and seek talks with Russia to renegotiate its settlement after World War II.
The head of Germany’s federal criminal police, Holger Münch, on Thursday raised the number of suspects to 52, 23 of whom were recently in police custody, adding that searches and arrests were expected in the coming days.
Within 24 hours of Wednesday’s dawn raids, more important points emerged about how the group’s “council” sought to govern the federal republic as a “German principality” after its violent coup. state, with a hard-to-understand corporate lawyer from Hanover to foreign minister and a circle of family doctors from a village in Lower Saxony to head the Ministry of Health.
However, it has been hotly debated whether the organization had the ability to turn its fantasies of strength into reality.
Heinrich XIII’s tweed appearance at the time of his arrest facilitated jokes about elders who had the madness of greatness. The left-leaning newspaper Taz, known for its tongue-in-cheek front pages, published a photo of Heinrich XIII’s arrest, above the headline: “[German President] Steinmeier remains in office. “
On Maischberger’s popular communication screen on Wednesday night, TV presenter Micky Beisenherz joked that Heinrich XIII had used the same stylist as Alexander Gauland, the former Anglophile co-leader of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Even when he tried to take the story seriously, Beisenherz struggled: “If I’m reading the news right now, I’m pretty glad the army runs out of ammunition,” he joked.
However, talking about the implausible characteristics of the would-be coup plotters was also of interest to the AfD, whose former MP and active judge on Birgit Malsack-Winkemann had been appointed through the conspirators as Germany’s long-term justice minister. A putsch with 50 retirees?” tweeted far-right MP Petr Bystron. “It would be difficult for them to take over the San Marino town hall. “
Left-wing Party delegate Martina Renner, a far-right terror specialist, criticized the fact that police briefed some members of the press ahead of Wednesday’s raids to ensure maximum coverage. as a PR stunt,” Renner said.
Germany’s national intelligence chief, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, said that while Wednesday’s raids had been preventive, the group’s plans for a bloody coup attempt were serious.
“In general, German security agencies were on the stage at all times,” Haldenwang said. “But if it had been for this group, then the risk was already very real. “
In a video posted online on Nov. 27, one of the conspirators spoke of a “period of turmoil” that would take a stand “in the coming weeks, before Christmas. “
The group’s plans had recently materialized and they had begun to obtain weapons, Haldenwang added: “The affinity with weapons is very high. There are legal and illegal weapons,” say what kind of arsenal his investigators had found.
Amid the satisfied smiles over the tie-clad aristocrats, some of the conspirators’ ties to the army have set off real alarms. The 251st Parachute Battalion, the elite combat force that later defeated the Comguyd Special Operations Forces (KSK).
Another suspect arrested Wednesday at the time was still a logistics rate sergeant at the KSK, which led to a raid on his workplace at the special forces barracks in southwest Calw town. A Defense Ministry spokesman did not say Wednesday whether the man’s position in the army unit allowed him access to ammunition depots.
The KSK has been the source of a steady stream of far-right scandals in recent years, leading to calls for its dissolution. In 2020, a KSK company was dissolved after police seized weapons and ammunition in a raid on the property of one of its infantrymen. in the eastern state of Saxony.
In 2020, the German Defense Ministry showed reports that 60,000 rounds of ammunition had disappeared from its arsenal over the past 10 years.
Even if the organization of conspirators around Heinrich XIII would probably not have succeeded in fulfilling its fantasy of overthrowing the German democratic order, the threat of serious bloodshed is credible.
In former MP Malsack-Winkemann, they reportedly had an accomplice who was aware of the Bundestag’s security arrangements and kept a pass for former MPs.
“Probably, a coup is very unlikely,” Miro Dittrich, an expert on right-wing extremism, said in an interview with Die Zeit newspaper. a serious risk to human life. In fact, there would have been deaths.