Frankfurt to hold trial against Germany coup plotters
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A far-right group had planned to storm the Reichstag in Berlin through its paramilitary wing with armed support, arrest members of the Bundestag, and parade a shackled Olaf Scholz on German Television.
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German police officers stand under barbed wire securing a temporary courtroom that was built for a trial starting on Tuesday in Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (AP)
Amid high security and huge media interest, a trio of trials of a far-right group of conspiracists who planned to overthrow Germany violently is set to happen today in Frankfurt.
Seven members, including a former policeman and a former judge who is currently an MP for the AfD party, are on trial alongside the alleged ringleader of the group, known as Prince Heinrich XIII, a self-styled aristocrat estate agent, and his Russian girlfriend.
Reichsbürger
The group had thought that it would win over regular Germans through its coup. Federal prosecutors revealed that the group planned to storm the Reichstag in Berlin through its paramilitary wing with armed support, arrest members of the Bundestag, and parade a shackled Olaf Scholz on German Television.
If their plan had worked out, 72-year-old Heinrich would have become the new chancellor of Germany.
Reichsbürger, or citizens of the Reich, which the group is part of, is an expanding movement including 23,000 members so far, per the authorities' estimation, and does not acknowledge the legitimacy of the modern German state, calling for the redraw of its borders to pre-1918 lines.
A series of trials
At the end of April, a trial against the group's alleged military wing of former special service soldiers, police, a metalworker, and a plumber began in Stuttgart.
The one taking place today in Frankfurt in an intentionally built metal container building on the outskirts of the city is the second one involving the plotters.
In Munich in June, a third trial is expected to happen involving the group's so-called esoteric wing, its under-construction cabinet, including a doctor and a celebrity chef.
As one of those under trial died in a Frankfurt hospital recently at 70 years old, 26 people are currently on trial with three cases predicted to go on for at least a year.
A spokesperson for Frankfurt's regional court, Gundula Fehns-Böer, said, "It’s a challenge for us all, but we’ll sit here for as long as we have to sit."
Questions on their level of danger
In December 2022, heavily armed forces stormed houses, flats, offices, and a remote hunting lodge in Germany, leading to the arrest of the alleged plotters including a leading member of a QAnon conspiracy theory organization in Germany, a clairvoyant, a dentist, and an amateur pilot. In the months leading to this arrest, investigators were keeping an eye on the group.
Two police officers were previously injured while storming the house of one member as he opened fire on them.
The ideas brought by this group have been widely criticized in Germany and abroad, as some evidence allegedly indicated that some of the plotters even take action based on star positions.
Some people have pointed fingers at the German authorities, saying that the latter are exaggerating the claims of the danger that such a group actually brings, as they are not sure whether its plans are doable.
An expert in constitutional law at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, and co-author of the book Reichsbürger, Sophie Schönberger, said, "The chances of such a putsch actually succeeding were not all that high, but it could have unleashed a considerable level of violence and was capable of sending shock waves through the system."
However, investigators have constantly reiterated that this group is well-organized and dangerous which was also mentioned in their 621-page indictment.
More than half a million euros in gold and cash have been amassed by the group alongside hundreds of firearms and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition and explosives, the police said.
It was also revealed that the members of this group had satellite phones which they planned on using for communication after the paramilitary wing succeeded in cutting off the national communications network and electricity.
To launch the coup, the group was waiting for "Day X" which, according to one of the members, was signaled by the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
