Police in Germany Arrest 25 for Plotting Coup

Rabat- Twenty five people have been arrested in raids throughout Germany on suspicion of planning to overthrow the government.

At least 3000 police officers carried out raids across much of Germany on Wednesday against suspected far-right extremists who allegedly sought to overthrow the government in an armed coup, according to media reports.

German Federal Minister of Justice Marco Bushmann tweeted this morning: “It’s suspected that an armed attack was planned against constitutional bodies.”

In a statement, Germany’s public prosecutor revealed that around 50 people are suspected of being part of the group that sought to overthrow the German government.

The group included members of the far-right and xenophobic Reichsburger (Citizens of the Reich) movement, while other coup plotters are said to be affiliated with the conspiracist movement QAnon.

The suspected coup plotters founded their group in November 2021, the prosecutor explained. He added that the group consisted of far-right and ex-military figures who were prepared to raid the parliament building, the Reichstag, and bring it down and replace it with a new state modelled on the Germany of 1871 – an empire called the Second Reich.

A spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office said that they don’t have a name for the group yet, the BBC reported earlier today.

Among those arrested is Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a former far-right AFD member of the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany‘s parliament. According to preliminary investigations, the former MP was being lined up as the coup plotters’ Justice Minister.

Investigators are thought to have gotten wind of the group last April, when they uncovered a plot to kidnap a government official involving a gang who called themselves United Patriots.

Part of their plan was to kidnap Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and begin a civil war to end Germany’s democracy, say the investigators.

The prosecutor said that the suspected coup plotters had already set up plans to rule Germany with departments for health, justice, and foreign affairs.

Their members believed that the only way to reach their goals was through “military means and violence against state representatives,” even if that meant killing people, the prosecutor detailed.