Reichsbürger: German far-right extremists charged with planning violent coup
🔶️ German prosecutors have charged 27 suspected far-right extremists with planning a violent coup.
🔶️ The suspects are accused of membership of the fringe Reichsbürger - or Citizens of the Reich - movement.
🔶️ "The members of the group strongly rejected state institutions and the free democratic constitutional order," according to the indictment.
🔶️ They are mostly associates of Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, a Reichsbürger figurehead from an aristocratic family.
🔶️ Prosecutors have charged the 27 people with planning to overthrow Germany's democratic political system.
🔶️ Concrete preparations were made for a coup beginning in summer 2021.
🔶️ Prince Reuss was planned to be head of state. On taking office, he would negotiate a peace treaty with the Allied powers which won World War II. Prince Reuss tried to meet representatives of the Russian government to gain support for the coup, according to prosecutors.
🔶️ Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, then a member of the Bundestag for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, would have been made justice minister. Prosecutors said she granted access to parliamentary buildings to other co-conspirators.
🔶️ According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, there are about 23,000 followers of the Reichsbürger movement in the country.
There are no comments yet.