Extremism: Munich trial against suspected Reich citizens begins in June

A trial against eight defendants from the alleged “Reich Citizens” group around Henry XIII will begin in June at the Munich Higher Regional Court. Prince Reuss. The court scheduled 54 hearing dates starting June 18, it said in a statement. According to current planning, the verdict could fall on January 23, 2025.

The Federal Prosecutor General accuses the accused six men and two women of, among other things, membership in a terrorist organization and preparing a treasonous enterprise. Some of them are said to have been founding members of the association. The main defendant will also stand trial on charges of preparing a serious act of violence that endangers the state.

Security forces took action against the group in a large-scale anti-terror raid shortly after St. Nicholas Day 2022 in several federal states and abroad. In total, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office then charged 27 suspects – including before the higher regional courts in Stuttgart and Frankfurt am Main. The trial is scheduled to begin in Stuttgart on April 29th. In Frankfurt, it is primarily the suspected ringleaders who are accused, in Stuttgart the so-called military wing and in Munich the other suspected members.

Plans to overthrow the political system in Germany

The accused are said to have planned to overthrow the political system in Germany. They knowingly accepted deaths. The investigators explained at the time that they had already drawn up the basic structures for their own state order. As head of state, Henry XIII would have. Prince Reuss should act. According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, from August 2021 the association planned to enter the Reichstag building in Berlin with an armed group in order to arrest members of the German Bundestag and thus bring about the overthrow of the system.

“The accused belonged to a terrorist organization founded at the end of July 2021 whose goal was to violently eliminate the existing state order in Germany and replace it with its own form of government that had already been fundamentally developed,” the Federal Prosecutor’s Office said in the indictment last year with. “The members of the association were united by a deep rejection of state institutions and the free, democratic basic order.”

According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the association had “access to a massive arsenal of weapons” with around 380 firearms, 350 cutting and stabbing weapons, almost 500 other weapons and 148,000 pieces of ammunition.