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Karl Lauterbach: A suspected terrorist group apparently planned his kidnapping
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Ying Tang / NurPhoto / IMAGO
Federal prosecutors have filed charges against a suspected terrorist group that is said to have planned the overthrow of the federal government and the kidnapping of Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD).
The trial against the four men and one woman who have been in custody since last year is to take place at the Koblenz Higher Regional Court, according to the Karlsruhe authorities.
The accused are suspected of having founded a domestic terrorist organization or having been a member of it, writes the federal prosecutor's office.
Sven B., Michael H., Thomas O. and Elisabeth R. are said to have been the ringleaders, and they are also accused of preparing a treasonable enterprise against the federal government.
In the case of Thomas O. and the other accused Thomas K., there is also sufficient suspicion because of the preparation of a serious act of violence that is dangerous to the state, it is said.
Investigators assume that the group merged by January 2022 at the latest.
Instead of parliamentary democracy, at the end of the plans an authoritarian system of government based on the model of the German Empire should be re-established.
The alleged plan
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.
The group has drawn up a three-stage action plan.
According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, the damage or destruction of important power supply facilities should initially cause a longer-lasting nationwide power failure, a blackout.
Then a high-ranking government representative, Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, was to be kidnapped "possibly after his bodyguards had been killed."
"The civil war-like conditions resulting from this, according to the accused, should ultimately enable the association to call a 'constituent assembly' in Berlin with publicity, which would officially depose the previous government and appoint a new 'leader'," according to the indictment.
Elisabeth R. was arrested in October 2022.
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), had already been arrested on April 13.
A former NVA soldier and a theologian
One of the ringleaders of the troop is said to be the former NVA soldier Sven B., who, according to SPIEGEL information, last worked as an accountant in Falkensee near Berlin.
Elisabeth R. is a theologian who published »Reichsbürger« pamphlets and anti-Semitic tracts on the Internet.
According to judicial files, the accused wanted to get the blessing for the coup from Russia.
Emissaries should take the ship across the Baltic Sea to Kaliningrad and then ask for an audience in the Kremlin – with Vladimir Putin personally.
The troops already had weapons - and were trying to get hold of more.
According to investigators, they had scraped together gold and silver coins worth 12,000 euros and ordered two Kalashnikov AK 47s and four Glock pistols with ammunition from an alleged arms dealer.
However, the man was an undercover investigator from the Rhineland-Palatinate State Criminal Police Office who had crept into her environment.
ptz/dpa
