German federal prosecutors launched a crackdown on a far-right extremist cell accused of plotting violent attacks targeting migrants, authorities said on Wednesday.
In a series of early morning raids, police took into custody five male suspects between the ages of 14 and 18 in the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg and Hesse, the Federal Prosecutor General’s office said.
The youths are accused of being part of – or in one case supporting – a group that calls itself the Last Wave of Defence.
“The members of this organization see themselves as the last resort for the defence of the ‘German nation,'” the prosecutors said in a statement.
“Their goal is to bring about a collapse of the democratic system in the Federal Republic of Germany through acts of violence, primarily against migrants and political opponents.”
Properties searched in eastern Germany
Four of those detained are accused of membership in a terrorist organization and one of supporting such an organization. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office also lists attempted murder, arson and property damage among the charges.
The 14-year-old has since been remanded in custody, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office said, with the remaining four detainees set to appear before an investigative judge later on Wednesday.
Police also searched properties in the states of Saxony and Thuringia in an operation related to three further suspected group members who are already in custody, prosecutors said.
Three of those detained on Wednesday are said to have been ringleaders of the group, which is believed to have been founded around April 2024 or earlier.
Journalist prevents attack on asylum shelter
Prosecutors believe the group is responsible for three brutal attacks and was plotting to conduct further attacks.
Members of the group are accused of having set fire to a cultural centre in Altdöbern, some 100 kilometres south-east of Berlin, in October.
Another attack on an asylum centre in Schmölln, south of Leipzig, was unsuccessful. Two suspected group members, who have been in custody for some time, smashed a window of the facility on January 5 and tried to set the building on fire using pyrotechnics, but failed.
Before fleeing the scene, they smeared swastikas and far-right slogans onto the shelter.
In February, investigators in Saxony foiled a suspected planned attack by the group on an asylum shelter in the town of Senftenberg, in the state of Brandenburg near Berlin, thanks to a tip-off by a journalist working for broadcaster RTL and news magazine Stern.
That same month police searched a flat and another property in the Saxon city of Meissen, recovering explosives, brass knuckles, flick knives, ammunition, alarm guns and airsoft guns, according to prosecutors in Dresden. A 21-year-old German man, who was detained that day, is suspected of having procured the weapons for an attack on the asylum facility in Senftenberg.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the explosives were industrially manufactured pyrotechnics.
German Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig said it was “particularly shocking” that the five people detained on Wednesday had all been minors at the time the group was founded, stressing the need for policies to counteract the radicalization of young people.
Properties searched over far-right extremist chat group
Elsewhere in Germany, some 100 officers also raided six properties in relation to investigations into a far-right extremist chat group.
Several young people, including teenagers, are suspected of having exchanged extremist content in the group and called on members to commit criminal offences, according to criminal police in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the raids took place.
The investigation is related to suspicion of dangerous bodily harm, incitement to hatred, the use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations.
Police are searching rooms in the “Altes Postamt” building. The Federal Prosecutor General is taking action against young men who are allegedly members of a right-wing extremist terror cell. Five suspects are arrested early this morning in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Hesse in a police operation against an association that calls itself the “Last Wave of Defense”. According to the Karlsruhe authorities, they are said to be between 14 and 18 years old. Bernd Wüstneck/dpa
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