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Oliver Janich in a video message in January 2021: The exact allegations are still unknown
The conspiracy ideologist Oliver Janich was arrested in the Philippines on Wednesday.
According to SPIEGEL information, the Philippine authorities are investigating suspected crimes against Janich.
In addition, since April 22, there has been a German arrest warrant against him for public incitement to commit crimes and insults.
The Munich public prosecutor confirmed that they are investigating Janich.
"There is a suspicion that the accused insulted another person in 2020 and 2021 - in each case publicly via Telegram - called for the execution of a prominent person and demanded the killing of former government members of the federal and state governments in the Federal Republic of Germany." , the authority told SPIEGEL.
During the pandemic, Oliver Janich stood out as one of the most radical German conspiracy ideologues.
At the end of 2021, he ranted on his Telegram channel, which has around 150,000 followers, that it was necessary “to shoot all members of the government at federal and state level”.
Janich had emigrated to the Philippines several years ago and set up a kind of dropout project there on the island of Tablas with like-minded people.
Since 2017, Janich has also been spreading elements of the QAnon conspiracy, which originated in the USA.
Its supporters sense the »deep state« behind everything and claim that the elites secretly torture children in order to obtain the elixir of life adrenochrome from their blood.
Janich's YouTube channel was deleted in autumn 2020, but he can continue to distribute content undisturbed on the Messenger platform Telegram.
Janich also made his arrest public there on Wednesday.
In a Telegram post, an Austrian blogger reported that he actually wanted to conduct an interview with Janich via video call on Wednesday morning, but then Janich told him that he was about to be arrested.
"In the interview we wanted to talk about new insights into Freemasonry," explained the blogger.
Several supporters and confidants of Janich spoke about the arrest in a live stream on Wednesday.
They said that the allegations against him could be related to his private life, but stated that all allegations were unfounded.
Observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution
Janich, who comes from Munich, has long been observed by the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Last year, the authority described him to SPIEGEL as “the best-known representative of the QAnon conspiracy theory in German-speaking countries”.
With the help of his wide reach, Janich spreads »right-wing extremist content and fuels a general distrust of his followers towards the social, economic and political system in Germany.«
He previously worked in Germany as a financial journalist.
According to SPIEGEL information, the Munich district court sentenced him to a fine in 2015 for market manipulation.
In the "Hot Stocks" section of "Focus Money" magazine, he recommended buying a Canadian junk stock - and received at least 15,000 euros for it from an acquaintance.
At the same time, he himself held a large number of shares in the advertised company.
His readers learned nothing about it.
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