German authorities have arrested eight people accused of being members of a militant extremist group planning an “ethnic cleansing” campaign.
Those arrested, seven in Germany and one in Poland, were all men aged between 21 and 25 and were reportedly members of a group calling itself the Saxon Separatists.
Found in 2020, it consists of 15 to 20 members with far-right extremist, racist and anti-Semitic views. Prosecutors said members “share a fundamental renunciation of the free democratic order” of the modern German state and had paramilitary training in house-to-house combat and the use of firearms.
Their preparations were based on the conviction that the modern German state is facing a collapse on an unnamed “Day X”.
“At this point the group planned to use armed force to conquer areas in Saxony and possibly also in other eastern German states in order to establish a state and society modelled on National Socialism,” said the federal public prosecutor’s office. “Undesired groups of people were to be removed from the area through ethnic cleansing if necessary.”
In total, 20 premises were searched in Austria, Poland and Germany, the latter involving 450 police officers.
Police said they had recovered military equipment including camouflage fatigues, combat helmets, gas masks and bulletproof vests.
Among those arrested are two brothers, identified only as Jörg und Jörn S, who are believed to be members of a far-right family from Austria.
The suspects were due to appear on Tuesday and Wednesday before remand judges, for a ruling on pretrial detention.
Federal interior minister Nancy Faeser said the raids had “thwarted militant coup plans by right-wing terrorists at an early stage, who were longing for a day X to attack people and our state with armed force”.
Federal justice minister Marco Buschmann denounced the “outrageous” plans, thwarted by police, as a reminder that “our constitutional state and the free and democratic basic order are under threat from many sides”.
“We must do everything we can to defend our liberal democracy against its enemies,” he said.
Since June, suspected members of another alleged coup plot have been on trial in proceedings in Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart.
According to regional media reports one of those arrested in the latest operation was a municipal politician for the far-right Alternative for Germany.
The politician sits for the AfD in the city council of the eastern city of Grimma, is a party board member in the district of Leipzig and is treasurer of the AfD Saxony’s youth wing, the Young Alternative.
When police officers tried to detain him, the politician reportedly produced a rifle. The police fired two warning shots, according to reports, after which the politician suffered a jaw injury that required emergency surgery.
It was unclear whether the injury came from the police weapon or the suspect’s gun.
