A year and a half after police and intelligence agents in Germany uncovered a plot to overthrow the country’s government and replace its chancellor, the first of three trials in the sprawling case will begin Monday in Stuttgart.
Most of the would-be insurrectionists were arrested in December 2022, when heavily armed German police officers stormed homes, apartments, offices and a remote royal hunting lodge and made dozens of arrests. Among those charged were a dentist, a clairvoyant, an amateur pilot and a man who ran a large QAnon telegram group. German authorities maintain that his front man was Henry
Despite that idiosyncratic membership, the group was well-organized and dangerous, investigators said. Some of its members were former officers trained by the elite German military forces. One of them was a judge-turned-far-right lawmaker from Alternative for Germany, the growing populist party known as the AfD. Police said the group had hidden more than half a million dollars in gold and cash; he accumulated hundreds of firearms, tens of thousands of ammunition and a cache of explosives; and secured satellite phones to communicate once he disabled national communications networks.
“All the satirical elements that are naturally present in this group (elements of QAnon, belief in UFOs, esotericism, the idea of being able to overthrow the system of the Federal Republic of Germany) should not distract attention from the fact that this group posed a serious potential threat,” said Jan Rathje, a member of a non-governmental organization that monitors conspiracy theories and right-wing extremism.
The trial set to begin Monday is the first of three scheduled for this spring and comes as Germany grapples with continued fears about the rise of the far right in its politics and a week after the arrests of several people accused of spying. for Russia and China. .
Now, federal prosecutors will try to show that a different group came dangerously close to launching an attack on the democratic foundations of Europe’s largest country.
Who are the people accused of plotting to overthrow the government?
The 26 defendants who will face trial this spring (a 27 died in prison last month) are part of a growing and increasingly dangerous movement called Reichsbürger, or citizens of the Reich.
What sets them apart from other far-right extremists, according to German authorities and right-wing extremism experts, is their refusal to accept the idea of the modern German state, which some of them say is actually a corporation run by shadowy bureaucrats. of a “deep state”.
Once dismissed as harmless eccentrics, the Reichsbürgers were often better known for making their own passports or refusing to pay taxes or government fines. But that view changed in 2016 when a follower killed a police officer during a raid on his home.
While authorities put the number of active members of the Reichsbürger movement in Germany at around 23,000, experts say the real figure is much higher. Last year, a study suggested that almost 5 percent of Germans were open to some form of conspiracy-based ideology.
“Even if many of the Reichsbürger’s ideologies seem strange — extremists often pursue implausible goals — that does not make them any less dangerous,” Konstantin von Notz, chairman of Germany’s parliamentary intelligence oversight committee, said in an email exchange. .
How was the coup supposed to play out?
Prosecutors believe the accused plotters (21 men and five women) planned to launch the coup by attacking Germany’s parliament. Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his ministers would be tied up and presented on national television to convince the public of regime change, according to a version of the plan that investigators leaked last year.
As part of the planning, they said, Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a former AfD lawmaker, had taken three of the men (at least two of them with military training) to Parliament, where they explored and photographed the facilities.
Once the plotters controlled Parliament, authorities said, homeland protection brigades would spring into action, quelling local dissent and recruiting soldiers for an army loyal to their cause.
Who is judged first?
The nine defendants tried in Stuttgart are accused of being part of the “military arm” of the plot. Prosecutors maintain that they were responsible for organizing and recruiting for the 286 “national territory protection brigades” that the conspirators planned to deploy. These brigades, prosecutors will argue, were designed to quell resistance and liquidate enemies at the local level once the national government had been overthrown.
They face charges of planning treasonous actions and joining a terrorist organization. Both charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years, although a combined sentence could be longer.
Some of the defendants are also accused of violating gun laws and one faces attempted murder charges for shooting a police officer during his arrest.
How long will the trial last?
Don’t expect verdicts soon. German trials of this complexity can take years to process, and this case already involves more than a dozen judges and nearly 100 defense attorneys.
A quirk of German law also requires that all testimony and evidence be heard and seen by the panel of judges overseeing the case.
Each defendant also has several defense attorneys, each of whom has the right to supplementary questions.
Whats Next?
Prince Reuss, his Russian girlfriend and the group’s founders will begin their trial next month in Frankfurt. Due to the large number of participants (seven men and two women are being tried in those proceedings, attended by a number of judges, lawyers and court officials), a new temporary courtroom had to be built on the outskirts of the city to carry out the trial.
A third trial, held in a high-security court in Munich, will deal with eight more defendants accused of serving as the conspiracy’s steering council, the coup cabinet-in-waiting.