Investigations into a far-right terror plot in the Bundeswehr have led to another arrest, officials said. The soldier is suspected of working with Franco A. and compiling a "hit list" which included the justice minister.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Sauer
Advertisement
Investigators have detained another member of the German armed forces who is suspected of planning a "serious attack on national security," federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe confirmed on Tuesday. Officials later announced that they had secured a warrant against the accused.
Without the warrant, they would have been forced to release the 27-year-old Bundeswehr soldier identified as Maximilian T. after 48 hours.
Maximilian T. was detained near the southwestern German city of Kehl, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel, who first reported on the arrest.
"The accused is strongly suspected of planning a severe act of violence against the state out of a right-wing extremist conviction," the prosecutor's office said in a statement. The soldier is also believed to be an accomplice of the right-wing lieutenant Franco A., who was arrested at the end of April and had registered as a refugee to carry out xenophobic attacks. At the end of April, police also detained a 24-year-old student identified as Mathias F. in connection with the attack
Prosecutors believe that the Maximillian T. compiled a list of German officials that the group could attack.
"The suspects have classified their possible targets in various categories – there were categories from A to D," a spokeswoman for the Federal Prosecutors' office in Karlsruhe said.
The former German president, Joachim Gauck, and the current justice minister, Heiko Maas, were determined to be "A category" targets.
Spiegel also reported that the Maximilian T. was stationed at the same Franco-German brigade in Illkirch with Franco A. and that he helped cover for the lieutenant as he maintained his false identity as a Syrian refugee.
Security sources told Spiegel that online chats between Franco A., Mathias F., and Maximilian T. clearly showed their attitudes and readiness for violence.
One investigator told the news magazine that each member confirmed "they were ready to kill for their cause."
Authorities are still unsure exactly what the three men were planning to do. They did, however, uncover around 1,000 rounds of live ammunition from the Bundeswehr stashed at the home of Mathias F. Also, the trio allegedly bought a gun in Austria. In mid-January, Franco A, hid the weapon in a bathroom for the disabled in the Vienna airport, where it was later discovered by the Austrian police.
The ongoing affair has raised serious questions about the extent of right-wing sentiment within Germany's armed forces as well as how Germany's asylum procedures failed to detect that Franco A. was operating under a false identity as a Syrian refugee.
In an unrelated case, two members of the German Left party reported a Bundeswehr officier and AfD councilman in Cologne, Hendrik Rottmann, to the authorities for allegedly inciting hatred. Rottmann is suspected of posting a banned Nazi slogan "Germany, awake" on his Twitter profile. Rottmann told the newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that he had no knowledge of the case.
rs/rt (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)
Bundeswehr scandals: Von der Leyen on the defensive
For German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, 2017 has so far been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. She's had to weather numerous Bundeswehr scandals and is under fire for not supporting her own troops.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Sauer
Von der Leyen under fire
Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen wanted to show she's not blind to problems among her own troops. In light of the most recent scandal, she openly criticized army leadership, saying the Bundeswehr had an "attitude problem." But Bundeswehr officials found her comments to be outrageous. Their response to the defense minister's criticism: "Leadership goes from the top down."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/G. Fischer
A fake Syrian refugee
The story causing the uproar: Bundeswehr lieutenant Franco A. was allegedly planning a terrorist attack and led a double life, pretending to be a Syrian refugee. He was granted partial asylum status as a war refugee in December 2016. His alleged goal: another attack blamed on a refugee. Bundeswehr officials are said to have known about Franco A.'s right-wing tendencies since 2014, but did nothing.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. Rumpenhorst
Abuse in Bad Reichenhall mountain rangers unit
The Bundeswehr is currently investigating 275 cases of suspected right-wing extremism. But they're also dealing with other types of scandals. In March 2017, the public learned about the case of a lance corporal who had suffered months of abuse in a Bavarian mountain rangers unit. The victim reported being threatened and sexually harassed in 2015 and 2016. Prosecutors investigated 14 people.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Hoppe
Female recruits forced to pole-dance
The biggest scandal of von der Leyen's term so far: the horror stories coming out of the Staufer army base in Pfullendorf. In January, it was revealed that superior officers there forced recruits to undress and perform sexually-motivated acts and filmed them. Female recruits were forced to pole dance as part of an "entrance exam." The top Bundeswehr training commander was fired as a result.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/T. Warnack
Many cases of right-wing extremism investigated
According to a report from Germany's federal parliamentary commissioner for the Bundeswehr, Hans-Peter Bartels, 2016 wasn't a great year for the Bundeswehr, either. There were around 60 incidents related to alleged right-wing extremism or "violations against the bases of Germany's free democratic constitutional structure." Troops shared anti-Semitic images and music or did the Nazi salute.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Sauer
Death on board the Gorch Fock
The Bundeswehr wasn't immune to scandals before von der Leyen became defense minister in December 2013. One that garnered significant public attention was the death of a 25-year-old recruit on the Navy training vessel Gorch Fock in 2010. The woman fell from the rigging during an exercise. As a consequence, other cadets refused to climb the rigging. Officer training on the ship was suspended.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Rehder
The birth of the Bundeswehr
Directly after World War II, Germany was not allowed to have an army. The Bundeswehr had its start in West Germany in 1955. After reunification, the Bundeswehr took in 20,000 soldiers from East Germany's armed forces. A big change came in 1999, when the Bundeswehr first participated in an international conflict: the Kosovo War. Before that, they had only gone abroad for peacekeeping missions.
Image: picture alliance/akg-images
No more mandatory service
Today the Bundeswehr has roughly 178,200 active soldiers. As of March 2017, 11.4 percent of them are women. Until 2011, men were required to do mandatory military service, the length of which varied between nine and 18 months. Today, the Bundeswehr has to appeal to young people to recruit soldiers. The most recent scandals are making that that more and more difficult.
