Far-right terror group in dock in Germany over attack plot
BERLIN: The trial of a neo-Nazi “terrorist” cell accused of plotting a violent political uprising in Germany opened yesterday amid reports the country’s far-right scene is growing more armed and radical. Eight members of the so-called Revolution Chemnitz group aged between 21 and 32 are answering to charges of “forming a right-wing terrorist organization”.
The suspects are accused of “coming together to achieve their political goals - to shake the foundations of the state - with serious violent acts”, a spokeswoman for the superior regional court said. They allegedly sought to carry out “violent attacks and armed assaults” against immigrants, political “opponents”, reporters and members of the economic establishment.
Authorities believe the group’s members were trying to acquire semi-automatic weapons for a potential bloodbath last year in Berlin on October 3, Germany’s National Unity Day. “This is one of the most important trials to date dealing with farright terrorism,” chief federal prosecutor Peter Frank said. Security agencies hope the trial, which is set to last until at least April 2020 and hear around 75 witnesses, will reveal what exactly was being plotted and the scope of the network.
Almost a year to the day after most of the suspects’ arrest in coordinated raids, the proceedings are taking place under tight security in Dresden, the capital of Saxony state, a stronghold of the extreme right. Resentment runs deep in the region over Merkel’s liberal refugee policy that led to the arrival of more than a million asylum seekers to Germany since 2015. The anti-immigrant, antiMuslim Alternative for Germany (AfD) party scored 27.5 percent in a state election earlier this month, just shy of the 32 percent garnered by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.
The defendants belong to the hooligan, neoNazi and skinhead scene in and around Chemnitz, another city in Saxony, which was the site of antimigrant street violence following the murder of a German man in August last year. Last month a 24year-old Syrian man was sentenced to nine-anda-half years in jail for the knife killing. In the hours after the stabbing, thousands of people took to the streets in protest, answering calls by the AfD and nationalist group PEGIDA, which campaigns against what it calls the Islamisation of the West.— AFP