The alleged ringleaders of the attempted coup d’état in Germany by a small group of far-right and conspiracists, dismantled by prosecutors and police in December 2022, sat in the dock at the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt this Tuesday.
The coup plot, made up of Reichsbürger (citizens of the Reich), who do not recognize the Federal Republic or abide by the Constitution, and by followers of conspiracy theories, wanted to overthrow the Government and planned a violent invasion of the Bundestag (lower house). of Parliament), according to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.
26 people will be tried in three trials. This is the second, and the most notorious, because it involves the leaders of the attempt, among them an aristocrat, former army officers and a former far-right deputy, of a total of nine who face trial in a pavilion purpose-built on the outskirts. from Frankfurt. “Our security agencies uncovered and dismantled this terrorist network that was planning a violent overthrow. “These are not harmless madmen, but dangerous terrorist suspects,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.
The main leader is the businessman Heinrich Reuss, 72 years old, who is dedicated to real estate businesses and the production of champagne, coming from a noble family in Thuringia, which is why he calls himself Henry XIII, Prince Reuss. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, this man was going to serve as “head of state.”
Another leader is Rüdiger von Pescatore, a former lieutenant colonel and paratrooper, who was dismissed from the army in 1990 for violating weapons regulations, and who aspired to lead the armed forces after the coup. Also in the leadership was Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a former member of the Bundestag of the far-right AfD party and a judge from Berlin – she is suspended as such – who was going to be Minister of Justice. There are three other men-at-arms: Maximilian Eder, a former army colonel; Michael Fritsch, former police officer in Hannover (he was suspended in 2020 for participating in demonstrations against anti-covid regulations); and Peter Wörner, a former soldier, who lived in Norway.
In the plot there is a shadow of Russia. The Prosecutor’s Office says that a Russian citizen named Vitalia B., alleged romantic partner of Heinrich Reuss, “put the aristocrat in contact with the Russian consulate general in Leipzig and accompanied him there in June 2022.” The aforementioned would have tried to obtain support from Moscow, although when the cell was dismantled, the Kremlin denied any knowledge or involvement in the plot.
The ringleaders are accused of having founded in 2021 a “terrorist organization whose objective was to overthrow the existing state order in Germany and replace it with their own form of state.” The suspects knew that their objective could only be achieved by force and were willing to assume deaths, prosecutors warn. “They planned to infiltrate an armed group into the Parliament building in Berlin, arrest legislators and overthrow the system; “They understood that taking power would mean killing people,” the prosecutors write.
The first trial began in Stuttgart on April 29 with nine defendants, and the third will begin in Munich on June 18, with the remaining eight alleged participants in the plot. There was another accused, but he has died.
For the three processes, the courts have scheduled fifty days of hearings, until at least January 2025. Given the complexity of the case and the number of witnesses and suspects, it is estimated that the trials will last longer, perhaps years. If found guilty, the accused could receive sentences of up to ten years in prison, as provided in article 83 of the Penal Code.
The suspects had provided themselves with the means for their purposes: 500,000 euros, in addition to “an arsenal of 380 firearms, nearly 350 edged weapons, as well as another 500 weapons and at least 148,000 rounds of ammunition,” the investigators indicate. On the conspiracist side – in the group there are also Querdenkers (lateral thinkers), who believe in conspiracy theories – the conspirators maintained that Germany is governed by a deep state whose objective would be the mass murder of children and young people.