Nine of the suspects are accused of belonging to a terrorist organization aiming to “destroy by force the existing state order in Germany”.
German prosecutors said Tuesday they had launched terrorism charges against 27 peopleincluding a self-proclaimed prince and a former far-right lawmaker, in an alleged plot to overthrow the government that was exposed by a series of arrests a year ago.
An indictment against ten suspects was filed on December 11 in the Frankfurt State Court. Under the German legal system, the court must now decide if and when the case will go to trial.
Nine of these suspects, all German nationals, are accused of belonging to a terrorist organization founded in July 2021 with the aim of “to suppress by force the existing state order in Germany” federal prosecutors said in a statement.
Prosecutors said the accused believed in a “conglomerate of conspiracy myths“including the ideology of Reich Citizens and QAnon, and that they were convinced that Germany was governed by a so-called “deep state” (an illegitimate state that would govern the country from the shadows).
Followers of the Reich Citizens movement reject Germany’s post-war constitution and have called for the fall of the government, while QAnon is a global conspiracy theory with roots in the United States.
The nine suspects are also accused of “preparation of an enterprise of high treason“.
The project would involve Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, whom the group reportedly planned to install as Germany’s new provisional leader, Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a judge and former lawmaker from the far-right Alternative for Germany party, and a paratrooper at retirement.
The group planned to storm the parliament building in Berlin and arrest MPs, according to prosecutors. He intended to negotiate a new post-coup order primarily with Russiaone of the Allied victors of World War II.
They indicated that the self-proclaimed Prince Reuss had tried to contact Russian officials in 2022 in order to obtain Russian support for this projectbut it is unclear how Russia reacted.
A Russian woman, identified only as Vitalia B., is accused of supporting the terrorist organization, including by establishing contact with the Russian consulate in Leipzig and accompanying the “prince” there.
Seventeen other alleged members of the group were charged in separate indictments by courts in Stuttgart and Munich, prosecutors said.
The authorities have repeatedly warned that right-wing extremists posed the greatest threat to Germany’s internal security. This threat was highlighted by the assassination of a regional elected official and an attempted attack on a synagogue in 2019. A year later, far-right activists participating in a demonstration against the country’s restrictions on pandemic tried, in vain, to storm the parliament building in Berlin.
In a separate case, five people went on trial in May for an alleged plot by a group calling itself United Patriots – which prosecutors say is also linked to the Reich Citizens scene – aiming to launch a far-right coup and kidnap the German health minister.