In connection with the allegedly planned kidnapping of Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD), the federal prosecutor’s office had a woman arrested on suspicion of terrorism. The authority announced on Thursday in Karlsruhe that she held a senior position in the administrative part of the anti-state group that was exposed in April.
According to the announcement, the Germans made, among other things, guidelines for advancing and coordinating the group’s plans. She was involved in procuring weapons and explosives, repeatedly called for the project to be implemented quickly and gave concrete deadlines. She also conducted recruitment talks with potential association members.
Arrest in Saxony
Officials from the Rhineland-Palatinate State Criminal Police Office and the Saxon police arrested the suspect on Thursday in the Mittelsachsen district and searched the premises. A magistrate would later decide whether the woman should be remanded in custody.
They are pursuing an ideology that rejects the Basic Law and the basic state order of the Federal Republic of Germany, it said. Rather, according to these ideas, the German Reich continues to exist on the basis of the constitution of 1871. Four suspected accomplices, all Germans from Neustadt an der Weinstrasse (Rhineland-Palatinate), Falkensee near Berlin and from the districts of Ammerland (Lower Saxony) and Landshut (Bavaria), were arrested on April 13. Almost two weeks later, the Attorney General took over the investigation.
According to the federal prosecutor’s office, the group had set itself the goal of triggering conditions similar to civil war in Germany and thus ultimately bringing about the fall of the federal government and parliamentary democracy. “For this purpose, it was planned to bring about a nationwide “black out” by damaging or destroying power supply facilities,” it said. In addition, Minister Lauterbach was to be kidnapped, with the killing of bodyguards in the room. The association was therefore divided into a “military” and an “administrative” branch.
