Nine men are set to stand trial in Germany on Monday, facing charges of high treason, attempted murder, and conspiring to carry out a violent coup d’état. The alleged plot aimed to install an aristocrat as the national leader and impose martial law.
Three marathon trials of 27 people accused of conspiring in a plot that authorities foiled at the end of 2022 begin with the hearing in a maximum security courtroom in Stuttgart. Together, they amount to one of the largest legal proceedings in German history.
Monday’s trial focuses on nine suspects, members of the Reichsbuerger (Citizens of the Reich) group, who allegedly aimed to impose harsh military law on Germany after carrying out a coup.
The country’s domestic intelligence service, Verfassungsschutz, began monitoring the Reichsburger group in 2016. The group, consisting of around 21,000 individuals, does not recognize modern-day Germany as a legitimate state.
Real estate investor Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss, a scion of a now-throneless dynasty, is leading the political leadership of the group on trial, and he will appear in court in Frankfurt next month. Another group of suspects, including an astrologer, will stand trial in Munich in June.
Prosecutors say that the suspects’ meticulous planning and stocks of firearms and cash show they were a real danger.
“They planned to infiltrate an armed group into the parliament building in Berlin, detain legislators, and bring down the system,” they wrote. “They understood that seizing power would involve killing people.”
On Sunday, Reuters was unable to contact the suspects, who are expected to contest the charges, or their lawyers for comment.
One of those going on trial on Monday referred to in trial documents as Markus L., shot and seriously injured a policeman while resisting arrest, prosecutors say.
The nine had accumulated 500,000 euros ($535,227.5) in cash, along with 380 guns, 350 bladed weapons, and some 148,000 rounds of ammunition.
Reichsbuergers tend to believe they are citizens of an earlier Germany – typically the pre-World War One German Reich – which today’s Federal Republic has usurped.
They base their beliefs on the idea that a foreign “alliance,” including the U.S. and Russia, stands ready to help them depose an illegitimate “Deep State” squatting in office in Germany since World War II.
“These militant Reichsbuerger are driven by hatred for our democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Sunday. “We will continue our crackdown until these militant structures have been fully exposed and crushed.”
The Reichsbuergers have parallels to and are partially inspired by similar sovereign citizen or the QAnon movements in Britain and the U.S., where similar theories about a Deep State helped fuel the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Judges have scheduled hearings in the Stuttgart case until January 2025, but given the complexity of the case and the number of witnesses and suspects, experts believe it could run for much longer, possibly even for several years.
The last comparable trial of members of the far-right National Socialist Underground gang that murdered 10 people, most of them ethnic Turks, lasted five years.
Source: Reuters
