https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/qanon-inspired-group-accused-of-plotting-violent-german-coup/ar-AA150kGv?ocid
Berlin — Police have arrested at least 25 people tied to an alleged right-wing extremist plot to overthrow Germany's government. The group targeted in about 130 raids across Germany was described by prosecutors as being influenced by QAnon conspiracy theories and espousing a doctrine similar to that of far-right groups in the U.S. and across Europe.
Germany's Federal Prosecutor General is now investigating the suspected right-wing terror group, which calls itself Reichsbürger, for allegedly planning an attack on the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, as part of a violent coup to overthrow the government.
The investigators' trail leads to a member of a former Germany royal family as the purported figurehead, a former parliamentarian from the far-right AfD political party, and of particularly concern to the investigators, to former members of the German military's special forces.
The central figure of the group is Heinrich Reuss, who calls himself Prince Heinrich XIII. He's the scion of a long-established but minor German royal household from what is now Thuringia, in eastern Germany. The 71-year-old has publicly advocated his "Reichsbürger" theses for several years, which suggests the modern German state is illegitimate and that the old royal lineage from the 19th century must be restored to power.
One of the leading suspects swept up in the raids was Rüdiger von P., who commanded a German paratrooper battalion in the early 1990s until it was absorbed into the then-newly-founded national commando special forces (KSK). He was dismissed from the Bundeswehr at the time after being found to have stolen weapons from the military's stocks.
Some suspected members of the group had already made public appearances as agitators at recent protests against Germany's anti-coronavirus measures. For example, a former military colonel and member of the special forces named by prosecutors as Maximilian E. publicly advocated at one protest to send Germany's special forces to "clean up the mess" in the national government.
Due to the large number of suspects and the large number of arrest warrants executed on Wednesday, the raids will pose a considerable logistical challenge for the judiciary and law enforcement authorities involved. All those arrested must now be brought before an investigating judge by the end of the following day, Thursday, under German law. It will be up to those judges to decide whether the individuals can be held in pre-trial detention.