The early morning raids targeted people associated with the “Reichsbuerger”, or Citizens of the Reich, movement, which rejects the modern German state, claiming it is an illegitimate successor to Nazi-era Germany.<\/p>\n
Two of seven suspects were detained and weapons, munitions and explosives were found during the raids, the chief federal prosecutor’s office said.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the Justice Ministry said the raids underlined the government’s determination to crack down on ultra-right extremists, whose numbers are rising across Germany.<\/p>\n
“This is an important signal against the far-right extremist scene in Germany which shows that our investigative agencies are vigilant and will proceed with great resolve against extremists,” he said.<\/p>\n
The raids involving around 200 officers included searches of the homes of six people believed to have founded the new group, and that of a seventh individual suspected of helping the group get supplies.<\/p>\n
They took place in Berlin and the states of Baden-Wuerttemerg, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate and Sachsen-Anhalt.<\/p>\n
“The goal of today’s search measures was to obtain further evidence of the actual creation of a formal group, as well as the alleged planned criminal acts and any potential tools,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The suspects were largely connected via social media and were believed to have started planning attacks in the spring of 2016, the office said.<\/p>\n
Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency put the group under observation in November, weeks after one of its members shot dead a policeman during a raid at his home.<\/p>\n
The agency warned last year that ultra-right extremists were increasingly ready to commit acts of violence in the wake of the arrival of more than a million migrants into Germany.<\/p>\n
It also called for action in order to stop the emergence of what it called “right-wing terrorist structures”.<\/p>\n
The number of far-right extremists deemed to be at risk of carrying out violent acts rose from 11,800 in 2015 to 12,100 in 2016, according to an interior ministry spokeswoman.<\/p>\n
German authorities broke up a suspected ultra-right militant group known as “Oldschool Society” last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The early morning raids targeted people associated with the “Reichsbuerger”, or Citizens of the Reich, movement, which rejects the modern German state, claiming it is an illegitimate successor to Nazi-era Germany. Two of seven suspects were detained and weapons, munitions and explosives were found during the raids, the chief federal prosecutor’s office said. A spokesman for the Justice Ministry said the raids underlined the government’s determination to crack down on ultra-right extremists, whose numbers are rising across Germany. “This is an important signal against the far-right extremist scene in Germany<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5348,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5346\/revisions\/5348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}