Officials say police carried out raids across Germany against suspected far-right extremists who allegedly sought to overthrow the government.
BERLIN — Thousands of 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. Officials said 25 people were detained.
Federal prosecutors said some 3,000 officers conducted searches at 130 sites in 11 of Germany’s 16 states. While police raids against the far right are not uncommonin the country — still sensitive to its grim Nazi past — the scale of the operation was unusual.
Justice Minister Marco Buschmann described the raids as an « anti-terrorism operation, » adding that the suspects may have planned an armed attack on institutions of the state.
Germany’s top security official said the group was « driven by violent coup fantasies and conspiracy ideologies. »
Prosecutors said the suspects were linked to the so-called Reich Citizens movement, whose adherents reject Germany’s postwar constitution and have called for bringing down the government.
Officers detained 22 German citizens on suspicion of « membership in a terrorist organization, » prosecutors said. Three other people, including a Russian citizen, were held on suspicion of supporting the organization, they said. Another 27 people were under investigation.
German media outlet Der Spiegel reported the searched locations included the barracks of Germany’s special forces unit KSK in the southwestern town of Calw. The unit received scrutiny in the past over alleged far-right involvement by some soldiers.
Federal prosecutors declined to confirm or deny that the barracks was searched.
Along with detentions in Germany, prosecutors said one person was detained in the Austrian town of Kitzbuehel and another in the Italian city of Perugia.
Prosecutors said those detained are alleged to have last year formed a « terrorist organization with the goal of overturning the existing state order in Germany and replace it with their own form of state, which was already in the course of being founded.
