Prince headed coup plot

Police uncover conspiracy by far-right militants led by disgruntled aristocrat

It reads like the outlandish plot of a political thriller — the overthrow of a stable western European government by a group of conspiracy theorists modelling themselves on the US Capitol rioters.

But German police said yesterday they had uncovered a real-life conspiracy by far-right militants led by a disgruntled aristocrat to storm the country’s parliament, seize power and install him as king.

Prosecutors allege Prince Heinrich XIII of Reuss was the leader of a sinister group that has been conspiring since November 2021 to storm the Bundestag.

More than 3000 police swooped on dozens of properties on Wednesday night in one of the largest raid operations in modern German history.

Among more than 20 suspects carted away in handcuffs was Prince

Heinrich, a distant descendant of Dutch kings.

The 71-year-old prince, an engineer and owner of a property company, was held in Frankfurt am Main, where he has an apartment and an office.

German police were also reported to be investigating a London-based asset management company with links to the prince, to establish if it was used to raise funds for the plot.

The plotters, who are members of the Reichsbu¨rger (Citizens of the Reich) movement, are also understood to have met at a castle and a hunting lodge owned by the prince in the Thuringian village of Saaldorf.

Prosecutors said the group formed a “terrorist organisation with the goal of overturning the existing state order in Germany and replacing it with their own form of state, which was already in the course of being founded”.

Prince Heinrich is a descendant of the House of Reuss who ruled over parts of Germany for hundreds of years, until the collapse of the German empire in the wake of the World War I.

Although members of the wider family have called him a “confused old man” and a conspiracy theorist, he is alleged to have been determined to overthrow the government.

In an intercepted phone call this summer, he is alleged to have said: “We’re going to flatten them now, it’s the end of the fun.”

Several of the suspected Reichsbu¨ rger plotters are understood to have their roots in recent protests by anti-vaxxers and Covid deniers who tried to storm the Bundestag in August 2020.

There are also reported links to the Qanon movement, who believe the US and other Western nations are in the hands of a mythical “deep state” controlled by secret powers.

In anticipation of taking power, the group had printed its own identity cards as the “German Reich Government in Exile”.

They were thought to have planned to use the failed storming of the US Capitol in January last year as a model for their own seizure of power.

And Prince Heinrich allegedly used intermediaries to make contact with Russia, hoping the Putin regime would establish friendly relations with his new government.

Prosecutors say that there is no evidence Moscow responded to his efforts and the Russian embassy yesterday denied having any links to the plotters’ organisation.

The places raided on Wednesday included the barracks where Germany’s elite army unit is based. Arrests were also made in Austria and northern Italy.

It is alleged the plotters had targeted soldiers and police officers to join their conspiracy. Several former soldiers are among the suspects as well as a serving senior officer in the elite KSK, the German version of the SAS.

Plans to acquire firearms had already been made, and the group had started weapons training, it is claimed. — Telegraph Group Ltd