“The military arm would build a new German Army, consisting of ‘homeland security companies’ yet to be established,” the federal prosecutor, Peter Frank, said on Wednesday. Members of the military faction had also been active in the in the federal armed forces, he said.
The attackers, prosecutors said, seemed willing to use violence. “Members of the organization were aware that this goal can only be achieved through the use of military means and violence against state representatives,” the prosecutor’s statement added. “This also included commissioning killings.”
It was not the first plot against government officials that law enforcement agencies have foiled this year.
In April, officers arrested four people who had been plotting to kidnap the health minister, Karl Lauterbach, and cause nationwide power outages. The police said that the suspects were linked to the Reichsbürger and anti-vaccine movements.
In the plot exposed on Wednesday, an AfD member, identified in German media as Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a lawmaker until last year, was designated to become the group’s justice minister in the post-coup regime the prosecutors said.
Her own story highlights some of the challenges German institutions face in trying to fight far-right threats from within: Only in October, Ms. Malsack-Winkemann as allowed by a judicial board to retain her position as a judge in Berlin, despite the protest of several regional judicial authorities, who said she had far-right views.
The German newspaper, Der Spiegel reported that she had posted regularly on Telegram using the slogan “WWG1WGA,” which stands for the QAnon slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.” Spiegel said she deleted the posts after it questioned her.
