Germany’s Federal Attorney General, Peter Frank, provided an update in Karlsruhe on Wednesday following the arrests of suspected far-right extremists accused of plotting to overthrow the government.
The Attorney General said that 25 arrests were made across international borders, accusing the suspects of supporting a terrorist organization led by Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, a descendent of a 12th-century eastern German ruling family.
“Today in the early hours of the morning, based on an arrest warrant, the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice arrested 25 people in Germany, Austria and Italy,” the Attorney General explained.
“We accuse the arrested members of supporting a terrorist organization. According to our knowledge, this association was formed at the end of November 2021 around the accused Heinrich PR.”
According to the Attorney General, 3,000 officers were involved in the operation to bring the alleged terrorist cell into custody.
Police officers conducted a large-scale search of a residential building in Nuremberg on Wednesday, as part of a nationwide investigation into an alleged right-wing terrorist plot.
Federal prosecutors claimed that 130 sites in 11 federal states had been targeted, with 25 people arrested. They said 22 are accused of ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’, with three others, including a Russian citizen, suspected of helping them.
Germany’s Russian Embassy stated that it had not received notification about the detention of one of its citizens, and had put in a request to the General Prosecutor’s Office. It also said, “Russian diplomatic and consular offices in Germany do not maintain contacts with representatives of terrorist groups and other illegal formations”.
The authorities claim the group’s members believed in a “conglomerate of conspiracy theories”, including the QAnon movement.
