First modification:
The police investigation focuses on a Telegram group made up of about 100 deniers of the pandemic. According to the investigations, several members of the group held a meeting in person in which they had planned an attack against the Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer.
An investigation by the public television channel ZDF warned on December 8 of the existence of a Telegram chat in which a voice message had circulated planning an attack against the Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer. It was the trigger for a police investigation that ended this Wednesday, December 15, with a raid in Dresden, Germany, to dismantle the alleged terrorist plans.
The messaging network group Telegram Dresden Offlinevernetzung (Dresden offline network) consisted of pandemic deniers, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaccine activists and far-right militants. In their messages they claimed to possess weapons and be willing to make any “sacrifice” to combat government policies around Covid-19.
The raid covered five houses in Dresden and one in the town of Heidenau. At least one suspect was arrested during the raids, and the Prosecutor’s Office is investigating five men between 34 and 64 years of age, and a 34-year-old woman, for allegedly planning a “serious violent act” that, according to the authorities, intended to “subvert the state order, “according to a joint statement issued by the police.
The spokesman for the Regional Office of Criminal Investigations, Tom Bernhardt, reported that the police found “crossbows, parts of weapons and weapons”, but clarified that they must verify if they work.
Suspects ready for any “sacrifice”
In the chat initially denounced by ZDF and later investigated by the police, a voice message from the administrator summed up the plans against Kretschmer: “enter where the guy is, take the guy out and hang him up.”
According to the police investigation, the six suspects would have held “non-virtual meetings” to plan the assassination of Kretschmer, who had declared himself “strengthened and energetic” after the ZDF channel revealed the conspiracy against him.
Members of the group shared anti-Semitic messages and far-right slogans, while also questioning government plans around the pandemic.
Saxony has the second highest coronavirus rate among the states (or Lander) of Germany, and the lowest vaccination rate, and is one of the most active when it comes to demonstrations against immunization campaigns, including a torchlight protest last month against the local interior minister.
A history of violence against authorities
The aggressiveness of messages from anti-vaccine activists and pandemic deniers has intensified in Germany in recent months. Social networks have been the scene of insults, threats and accusations of all kinds, so much so that officials such as Kretschmer himself have asked to reinforce surveillance against radical groups that operate mainly on Telegram.
But hate messages have started to come out of mobile devices and their applications. At least 12 German politicians, including four deputies, have received letters containing threats and even pieces of meat that according to the letters are contaminated with Covid-19 and Zyclon B, the gas used by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
“The resistance against vaccination and the measures will be bloody and unappetizing,” read the letter addressed to the mayor-governor of Berlin, Michael Müller.
According to the police analysis, neither the coronavirus nor the poison gas were present in the samples, but the president of the Bundestag (or Lower House of Parliament), Bärbel Bas, assured that the radical groups that carry out these types of threats “are a danger to our democracy. “
Interior Minister Nancy Feaser promised to reform a recently approved law that targets hate messages on social media, to include sanctions against the violent use of messaging platforms such as Telegram.
With EFE and Reuters
.