Germany bans the "Kingdom of Germany" group and arrests its leaders
Police have arrested four members of the radical group Kingdom of Germany, which was trying to replace the modern German state. This was reported by Reuters with reference to the German Ministry of the Interior and the Prosecutor's Office.
The raids on the Koenigreich Deutschland group came after the Interior Ministry banned the group, which prosecutors say has created shadow institutions for a new state in line with far-right ideology known as the Reichsbuerger movement.
According to prosecutors, one of the four arrested was the self-proclaimed sovereign of the "Kingdom of Germany".
German intelligence established surveillance of the Reichsbuerger movement in 2016 after one of its members shot and killed a police officer during a raid on his home.
Scrutiny of the movement, which encompasses a number of conspiracy theories questioning the legitimacy of the modern German state, intensified in December 2022 when authorities foiled previous plans for an armed coup.
The group's supporters believe that German democracy is an illegitimate facade and that they are citizens of a monarchy that they claim survived Germany's defeat in World War I despite its official abolition.
According to Interior Minister Alexander Dobryndt, the decades-old organization "Kingdom of Germany," which claims to have about 6,000 supporters, aims to separate from Germany and create a counterstate with its own police and jurisdiction.
"We are not talking about a group of harmless nostalgists, but about criminal organizations and a criminal network," Dobryndt said, adding that their criminal economic network has long been the focus of German authorities' attention.
The police announced the detention of four men. According to the prosecutor's office, they are the leaders of a group that has created "pseudo-state structures and institutions," including a banking and insurance system, a body that prints "fictitious documents" and its own currency.
- on May 2, Germany recognized the far-right AfD as an extremist organization and stated that the party violates the principles of human dignity and the rule of law.
- On the same day, the German Left Party announced its intention to make every effort to initiate a ban on the AfD. And US Secretary of State Rubio criticized the decision of the German ICS.
- On May 5, the AfD filed a lawsuit against the agency, which recognized it as an extremist.
- On May 7, Chancellor Merz criticized the US for supporting the AfD and announced an "explanatory" conversation with Trump.