Europe

Did “Reich citizens” know about the raid?

The "Reichsbürger" raid is now also a case for the Bundestag. The Union wants to know whether the suspects may have been warned. The investigations have also sparked a political debate.

After the raid last week, the legal committee and the interior committee are now dealing with the “Reich citizens”. The Union faction had requested the special sessions.

Among other things, the Union wants to know whether the suspects might have been warned so that they could possibly get rid of weapons and other evidence before the raid.

Questions about the case

MPs also want to ask questions about the case in the secret parliamentary control committee. The Chair of the Defense Committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, had also announced that she would put the topic on the agenda for the upcoming meeting in order to find out details from the MAD military counter-intelligence service.

The Greens are pushing for the group’s plans to be discussed in a current hour in the plenary session of the Bundestag. And Linke parliamentary group manager Jan Korte has requested a government statement from Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) on the arrests for his parliamentary group on Thursday.

23 in custody

Federal prosecutors arrested 25 people on Wednesday, including former officers and police officers. She accuses 22 of those arrested of being a member of a terrorist organization that wanted to overthrow the political system. Three arrested are considered supporters. The 23 suspects arrested in Germany are in custody. The federal prosecutor also spoke of 27 other suspects.

The arrests have also sparked a political debate. According to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, the number of so-called Reich citizens has risen sharply since the beginning of the year. According to Faeser, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution now estimates the number of people in this spectrum to be around 23,000. This is an increase of around 9.5 percent (around 2000 people) compared to the previous year. In 2018 and 2019, the domestic secret service assigned around 19,000 people to this very heterogeneous scene.

Faeser wants gun laws to be tightened

Faeser had therefore announced a tightening of gun laws at the weekend, among other things. “We are not dealing with harmless crackpots, but with terror suspects who are all in custody now,” she told the “Bild am Sonntag”. The government will “soon further tighten the German weapons law”.

However, the FDP disagrees. Parliamentary group leader Konstantin Kuhle rejects this: “There is no need to tighten gun laws to disarm ‘Reich citizens’.” The state should not get bogged down in the fight against enemies of the constitution and turn against law-abiding sport shooters and hunters who belong to the “middle of society”. Rather, there is a lack of personnel in the weapons authorities.

Extremists in the civil service

The federal prosecutor’s investigations into the alleged conspirators also fueled the discussion about extremists in the civil service. At Anne Will, Faeser defended her plan to change disciplinary law in order to get rid of enemies of the constitution in security agencies more quickly. Administrative court proceedings should no longer be necessary for this, but administrative acts should suffice. “We simply have to get faster there,” said the minister.

In addition, the federal cabinet wants to deal with a democracy promotion law on Wednesday, as Family Minister Lisa Paus announced. “With the law, we want to strengthen the backs of people who oppose anti-democratic and misanthropic currents and work for an unprejudiced, open cooperation,” said the Green politician to the newspapers of the Funke media group.

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