BERLIN (AP) — German police rounded up dozens of people including a self-styled prince, a retired paratrooper and a former judge Wednesday, accusing the suspects of discussing the violent overthrow of the government but leaving unclear how concrete the plans were.
A German official and a lawmaker said investigators may have detected real plotting, drunken fantasizing, or both. Regardless, Germany takes any right-wing threat seriously and thousands of police officers carried out pre-dawn raids across much of the country.
“We’re talking about a group that, according to what we know so far, planned to violently abolish our democratic state of law and an armed attack,” on the German parliament building, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said.
Sara Nanni, a lawmaker with the Green party, part of the German government, suggested the group may not have been capable.
“More details keep coming to light that raise doubts about whether these people were even clever enough to plan and carry out such a coup,” Nanni said in a post on the social network Mastodon. “The fact is: no matter how crude their ideas are and how hopeless their plans, even the attempt is dangerous!”