The Bundestag, the lower house of the German Parliament, announced this Friday that it will review its security measures after the dismantling of an extreme right-wing group that was preparing a coup d’état, and whose plans included an armed attack on the Reichstag, the chamber’s headquarters. “We will check in detail what security measures we have to adjust,” Bundestag deputy president Katrin Göring-Eckardt, an environmentalist, told the Funke newspaper group.
“Apparently there is also a link in this network and the AfD parliamentary group,” added Göring-Eckardt, referring to the arrest of Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a former deputy for this far-right party, who held a seat between 2017 and 2021. Malsack -Winkemann, 58, a judge of the Provincial Court (Landgericht) of Berlin, was one of the leaders of the coup plot, together with the also arrested Prince Heinrich XIII of Reuss and the ex-military Rüdiger v.P. The judiciary is now considering ways to expel Malsack-Winkemann.
Foreign Minister Olaf Scholz said at a press conference on Thursday that the presence of the former deputy in the terrorist organization that was allegedly planning a coup against the state “is obviously a more than notable and very serious case.”
Several parliamentarians expressed deep concern. Social Democrat Sebastian Hartmann, a specialist in domestic policy, called for “Mrs. Malsack-Winkemann’s contacts in the Bundestag to be urgently examined; It can be thought that [the conspirators] were waiting for help from within for their coup plan.”
Green deputy Konstantin von Notz, chairman of the parliamentary committee that oversees intelligence services, said the Bundestag’s security measures were not designed in anticipation of “enemies of the Constitution” being elected to parliament. “We have to increase the concept of protection for the Bundestag without sabotaging the everyday life of democratic legislators,” Notz told the RND media group.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which in this legislature has 78 deputies out of the total of 736 in the Chamber, has cultivated discretion since the dismantling of the cell, and the party leadership said that it “categorically rejects” the alleged violent plans . However, on Wednesday, the day of the raids, the AfD criticized the macro-police operation – there were 3,000 agents in eleven länder – calling it disproportionate, and accused the authorities of not investing the same resources in monitoring refugee reception centers.
On the other hand, the German authorities expect that in the coming days there will be more arrests and searches about the coup plan of a small group of extreme right and conspiracists that was dismantled on Wednesday, while police and prosecutors continue with the investigations. The conspirators belong to the movement of Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich), who do not accept the Federal Republic or its laws.
Holger Münch, head of the Federal Criminal Investigation Office (BKA), explained on Thursday on the ARD public channel that agents found weapons in 50 of the 150 homes and premises they searched in raids in 11 of the country’s 16 Länder. The weapons found include “from crossbows to rifles and ammunition, and this shows that they are not harmless.”
Twenty-five people were arrested on Wednesday – the vast majority men in their fifties – but the investigation encompasses a total of 54 suspects, so more arrests are likely, the BKA chief said. “We have identified other people whose status in relation to this group we do not yet know exactly,” said the head of the BKA, Holger Münch.
According to the Tageszeitung newspaper, in one of the house searches, the investigators found a “list of enemies” with the names of ministers, such as the environmentalist Annalena Baerbock, head of Foreign Affairs; and party leaders, such as the lame head of the Social Democrat SPD, Saskia Esken, or the president of the Christian Democrat CDU, Friedrich Merz, and his predecessor in office, Armin Laschet. Three television news presenters also appeared on the list.
