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Far-right ‘terror’ group in dock in Germany over attack plot
BERLIN, Sept 30, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The trial of a neo-Nazi “terrorist” cell
accused of plotting a violent political uprising in Germany opened Monday
amid reports the country’s far-right scene is growing more armed and radical.
Eight members of the so-called Revolution Chemnitz group aged between 21
and 32 are answering to charges of “forming a right-wing terrorist
organization”.
The suspects are accused of “coming together to achieve their political
goals — to shake the foundations of the state — with serious violent acts”,
a spokeswoman for the superior regional court said.
They allegedly sought to carry out “violent attacks and armed assaults”
against immigrants, political “opponents”, reporters and members of the
economic establishment.
Authorities believe the group’s members were trying to acquire semi-
automatic weapons for a potential bloodbath last year in Berlin on October 3,
Germany’s National Unity Day.
“This is one of the most important trials to date dealing with far-right
terrorism,” chief federal prosecutor Peter Frank said.
Security agencies hope the trial, which is set to last until at least April
2020 and hear around 75 witnesses, will reveal what exactly was being plotted
and the scope of the network.
Almost a year to the day after most of the suspects’ arrest in coordinated
raids, the proceedings are taking place under tight security in Dresden, the
capital of Saxony state, a stronghold of the extreme right.
Resentment runs deep in the region over Merkel’s liberal refugee policy
that led to the arrival of more than a million asylum seekers to Germany
since 2015.
The anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Alternative for Germany (AfD) party scored
27.5 percent in a state election earlier this month, just shy of the 32
percent garnered by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.
– A violent ‘test-run’ –
The defendants belong to the hooligan, neo-Nazi and skinhead scene in and
around Chemnitz, another city in Saxony, which was the site of anti-migrant
street violence following the murder of a German man in August last year.
Last month a 24-year-old Syrian man was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years
in jail for the knife killing.
In the hours after the stabbing, thousands of people took to the streets in
protest, answering calls by the AfD and nationalist group PEGIDA, which
campaigns against what it calls the Islamisation of the West.
The defendants launched an online chat group under the name Revolution
Chemnitz around the same time, in early September 2018.
Prosecutors said that on September 14 five of the suspects “armed with
glass bottles, weighted knuckle gloves, and an electroshock appliance,
attacked and hurt several foreign residents” in Chemnitz.
“Investigations show that the assault was a test-run for an event that one
of the accused planned for October 3, 2018,” they said.
The men reportedly “wanted to achieve more than the National Socialist
Underground” or NSU, a neo-Nazi extremist group uncovered in 2011 that
murdered 10 people and planted three bombs.
However authorities say they were able to swoop on the cell before it could
carry out its plans.
Most of the men were arrested on October 1, 2018 while their alleged
ringleader, 32-year-old electrician Christian Keilberg, was picked up two
weeks later for attacking immigrants in Chemnitz.
– Dangerous as ‘radical Islamism’ –
Saxony, a former communist state, has gained notoriety as the home base of
several extremist organisations.
Eight members of a far-right outfit called the Freital group were jailed
last year on terrorism and attempted murder charges for a series of
explosives attacks targeting refugees and anti-fascist activists.
Members of the NSU also evaded police for years in Chemnitz and another
Saxon town, Zwickau.
The latest trial comes just three months after the shocking assassination-
style murder of local pro-migrant politician Walter Luebcke in the western
city of Kassel, allegedly by a known neo-Nazi.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer this month warned of the rising danger of
the militant far right, calling it “as big a threat as radical Islamism”.
At the weekend, Seehofer said that police had uncovered 1,091 weapons
including firearms and explosives during probes of crimes linked to the far
right last year, far more than in 2017 when 676 were found.
BSS/AFP/RY/1440 hrs