On December 7, in one of many largest police raids within the historical past of the Federal Republic of Germany, some 3,000 officers stormed about 150 places in 11 federal states and arrested 25 folks, who proceed to be held in pretrial detention. One other 29 persons are below investigation. The state prosecutor has accused them of being members or supporters of a terrorist organisation, and the searches are ongoing.
On the day of the raid, the federal prosecutor launched an announcement saying these arrested belonged to an organisation “that aimed to overturn the prevailing state order in Germany and substitute it with its personal type of authorities.”
Prince Reuss Heinrich XIII was charged by the federal prosecutor because the ringleader. Prince Reuss is a Frankfurt actual property agent and descendant of a Thuringian noble household who dominated the Vogtland area for 700 years, whereas one other main suspect is the previous paratrooper commander Rüdiger von Pescatore, who led the terrorist organisation’s “navy arm.”
Among the many detainees are additionally the Berlin decide and former member of parliament of the far-right Various for Germany (AfD) Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, in addition to former elite troopers, together with the previous particular forces (KSK) Colonel Maximilian E. The places searched included the barracks of the KSK in Calw, Baden-Württemberg, which was beforehand recognized as a centre of the right-wing terrorist Hannibal community.
The community, which pulls on the milieu of Reichsbürger, QAnon supporters, so-called “lateral thinkers” (Querdenken) and coronavirus deniers, is estimated to quantity within the tens of hundreds. The Workplace for the Safety of the Structure (as Germany’s home secret service known as) numbers the supporters of the monarchist and anti-democratic Reichsbürger at 23,000 alone, 2,000 greater than a yr in the past. It considers 10 % to be ready to make use of violence.
Final week’s raid was apparently carried out as a result of the Inside Ministry and the chief federal prosecutor’s workplace feared imminent assaults towards state establishments, which might have endangered the lives of high-ranking authorities officers and politicians.
The investigation up to now into the terrorist community inside the Reichsbürger milieu has uncovered a strikingly giant variety of members of the KSK.
Along with the above-mentioned Rüdiger von Pescatore, these figures already identified by title embody Maximilian Eder, who led an armored grenadier battalion in Kosovo in 1999 and later served within the KSK; Peter Wörner, a educated KSK elite soldier who now works as a survival coach; and Andreas Meyer, who remains to be energetic within the KSK as a employees sergeant.
Not all the 54 folks below investigation by the general public prosecutor’s workplace are identified, so there might nicely be additional KSK members amongst them.
The sturdy presence of elite troopers among the many terror suspects makes clear that the plans for a putsch weren’t merely the fantasies of some loopy people, as is usually claimed. It’s now additionally identified that in the course of the first raids, the police secured some 90 weapons and a six-figure sum of money, and found a reference to gold bars price €6 million allegedly saved in a Swiss secure.
As well as, the investigators discovered lists of doable enemy targets. Based on the information journal Der Spiegel, they found on the arrested Marco v. H.’s residence a handwritten checklist of 10 politicians from Baden-Württemberg, a number of docs and a judicial official. Along with the names, the addresses of the politicians’ electoral district workplaces and the docs’ practices have been famous.
The excessive variety of suspected navy personnel is critical for one more purpose. It exhibits how intently the expansion of fascist terrorist networks and the right-wing extremist milieu on which they’re based mostly is linked with the revival of German militarism and the related rehabilitation of Nazi ideology and the crimes of the Wehrmacht.
The emergence of the KSK was straight related to the transformation of the German military (Bundeswehr) from a territorial defence military into a global intervention drive. It was based within the mid-Nineties, after the Federal Constitutional Court docket gave the inexperienced mild for out-of-area navy operations past NATO’s borders. It additionally adopted the declaration by Federal President Roman Herzog that the “finish of free-riding” had been reached, and Germany needed to assume political and navy duty on the planet in correspondence with its elevated weight on account of reunification.
The KSK is educated for particular operations behind enemy traces, together with focused killing. It operates within the strictest secrecy. No information on casualties and losses suffered by the unit is printed, even after operations have been accomplished. It was used in the course of the Yugoslav battle in Bosnia and Kosovo, in commando operations in a number of African international locations and particularly within the battle in Afghanistan.
There, the KSK labored with US Special Forces within the hunt for Taliban members. It’s stated to have killed extra folks than the remainder of the Bundeswehr mixed. The Bundeswehr solely responded to inquiries by stating that as a matter of precept it doesn’t depend useless enemies. When Colonel Georg Klein ordered an air raid in Kunduz that claimed 142 predominantly civilian lives, the KSK was concerned. Klein was later promoted and the function of the KSK was hid.
The elite unit, which includes solely slightly greater than 1,000 males, is surrounded by the stench of fascism. Its nearly 30-year historical past is accompanied by right-wing extremist incidents, which have repeatedly been lined up and trivialised.
In 2005, Reinhard Günzel, who had commanded the KSK till 2003, along with Ulrich Wegener, the founding father of the federal police particular operations unit GSG 9, printed a ebook at a far-right publishing home putting the KSK within the custom of the Wehrmachtsdivision Brandenburg. The Brandenburg Division operated behind enemy traces within the battle of extermination towards the Soviet Union.
Günzel was dismissed in 2003 as a result of he expressed his solidarity with anti-Semitic statements by former Christian Democratic Union member of the federal parliament Martin Hohmann. Right now, Hohmann is a member of the far-right Various for Germany.
In 2008, Daniel Ok., a KSK captain, threatened Lieutenant Colonel Jürgen Rose, a member of the crucial troopers’ affiliation Darmstädter Sign. He described Rose as an “enemy inside” whom one should “smash.”
Ok. acquired a referral and was promoted. Rose needed to retire prematurely and pay €3,000 in penance as a result of he had warned of right-wing tendencies within the KSK. Ok. was solely faraway from service in 2019 after he outed himself on Fb as a Reichsbürger (citizen of the Reich).
In 2017, KSK troopers celebrated the retirement of KSK Lieutenant Colonel Pascal D. with far-right rock music and Nazi salutes. They competed in lengthy throws with pig heads, and the winner’s prize was a prostitute.
In 2020, the 45-year-old KSK teacher Philipp Sch. was arrested after the police discovered explosives, an arsenal of weapons and ammunition and Nazi literature in a raid on his non-public property.
The Hannibal community exhibits most clearly the extent of the far-right menace posed by the KSK. After the arrest in April 2017 of the navy officer Franco A., who had posed as a refugee, it step by step grew to become identified {that a} non-commissioned officer of the elite unit named André S. had constructed up an intensive right-wing extremist community below the pseudonym Hannibal, with teams all through Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The Hannibal community included commando troopers, elite law enforcement officials, brokers for the intelligence businesses, judges and different state officers. They made extraordinarily violent plans. That they had entry to navy and safety sources and deliberate to make use of them to eradicate political opponents.
Members of the Hannibal group “Nordkreuz” stole tens of hundreds of ammunition rounds from authorities and deliberate to kidnap political opponents with Bundeswehr transporters and homicide them at specified places. They saved enemy lists, and order lists for caustic lime and a whole lot of physique luggage.
Though journalistic investigations revealed quite a few particulars in regards to the far-right conspiracy and the Federal Prosecutor’s Workplace carried out investigations, André S. was by no means prosecuted. After eight years of service within the KSK, most just lately as an teacher and safety officer within the Calw barracks, he was transferred however not launched from the Bundeswehr. There has not even been a disciplinary case mounted towards him. The Frankfurt Greater Regional Court docket rejected placing him on trial on account of a scarcity of “adequate suspicion of terrorism.”
One purpose is that André S. labored as an informant for the navy intelligence service MAD. This reveals the identical sample as within the Nationwide Socialist Underground (NSU) case. Quite a few informants and staff of the key providers who promoted far-right forces with state funds have been energetic within the quick proximity of the far-right NSU trio that murdered 10 folks. The information within the case are nonetheless below lock and key. Parliamentary committees of inquiry have been denied entry to them.
The plain conclusion is that there’s a connection between the Hannibal group and the Reichsbürger Community, which the Federal Public Prosecutor is now investigating. Nonetheless, the investigation will both be stonewalled or restricted to alleged “particular person perpetrators” as in earlier circumstances—the NSU trial, the assault on Cologne’s Mayor Henriette Reker, the homicide of Kassel’s regional President Walter Lübcke and the terrorist assaults in Halle and Hanau.
The far-right buildings lengthen deep into the state equipment and are intently linked to the return of militarism. Within the Baltic States and Ukraine, the Bundeswehr cooperates with armies that worship Nazi collaborators in the course of the Second World Conflict as heroes. Historians corresponding to Jörg Baberowski and Timothy Snyder, who trivialize the crimes of the Nazis, are promoted.
The ruling elite wants the far proper to suppress the rising opposition to militarism and its devastating social penalties. Having been pressured to maneuver towards the Reichsbürger Community, the ruling class will use the publicity of the fascist coup plot as justification to strengthen the state and take motion towards left-wing opponents.
Just one week after the raid towards the Reichsbürger, the Public Prosecutor’s Workplace in Neuruppin ordered nationwide home searches of “final era” activists. The Prosecutor’s Workplace is investigating the environmental group for “the preliminary suspicion of formation or assist of a felony affiliation, disruption of public enterprises, trespassing and coercion.” The pretext for the authorized assault is a protest towards the refinery PCK Schwedt, through which members of the group are stated to have turned off the emergency valves of the pipeline that carries oil from Rostock to Schwedt.
