Germany arrests suspected members of neo-Nazi group plotting revolt

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By Rachel More

BERLIN (Reuters) -German police have arrested eight suspected members of a neo-Nazi militant group driven by racist ideology and conspiracy theories who had been training in warfare for the downfall of the modern German state, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

News of the arrests came amid a 450-strong police operation to dismantle the group, named by prosecutors as “Saechsische Separatisten”, or Saxony Separatists, which has the abbreviation SS, the same as the Nazi party’s elite militia.

“Our security authorities have thus thwarted at an early stage militant coup plans by right-wing terrorists, who were longing for a Day X to attack people and our state with armed force,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

Media reports linked one of the suspects to the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) – which commands as much as 18% support in national polls, behind only the centre-right opposition – although the party itself insisted it had nothing to do with such a group.

This would be the second coup plot uncovered in Germany in recent years.

In 2022, authorities exposed the “Reichsbuerger” movement, led by a would-be prince with ambitions to overthrow the state and install a caretaker government, in a case that shocked Germany with its detailed network and planning.

The group targeted in Tuesday’s operation was formed no later than November 2020, the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

“It is a militant group of 15 to 20 individuals whose ideology is characterised by racist, anti-Semitic and partially apocalyptic ideas,” the statement added.

Convinced that Germany is nearing collapse, with the fall of the government prophesied for an undetermined “Day X”, the group had been training to use force to establish a new system in the country’s east inspired by Nazism, according to investigators.

“If necessary, unwanted groups of people are supposed to be removed from the area by means of ethnic cleansing,” the statement said.

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The suspected ringleader and founding member, identified by German and Polish authorities as 23-year-old Joerg S., was captured in the Polish border town of Zgorzelec.

The other seven were arrested in eastern Germany, in and around the cities of Leipzig and Dresden and the town of Meissen.

The suspects, who prosecutors said had conducted urban warfare exercises and had procured fatigues and bulletproof vests, could be charged with participating in a domestic terrorist organisation, in some cases under 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 came close to winning a state election in September.

He is an elected council member in Grimma, near Leipzig, according to the town’s website. Spiegel also said he had been treasurer of the AfD youth organisation “Junge Alternative” in Saxony since October.

AfD’s youth wing has been classified as an extremist entity by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, which is also monitoring the AfD at national level for suspected extremism.

“Our party stands firmly on the ground of a free and democratic basic order,” an AfD’s spokesperson said, adding that the party had “nothing in common” with such a group as the Saxony Separatists.

AfD said it could not confirm the Spiegel report that Haettasch was among the suspects.

According to a Handelsblatt report citing security sources, the local politician had confronted officers with a firearm during the police operation, after which an officer fired two warning shots. Haettasch was said to have suffered a jaw fracture.

A spokesperson for the public prosecutor confirmed that someone was injured and said the circumstances were under investigation.

(Additional reporting by Alan Charlish in Warsaw and Madeline Chambers Editing by Miranda Murray, Alexandra Hudson and Ros Russell)