The German judiciary announced the arrest of three new suspects in the country as part of an investigation into a far-right network dismantled in December 2022, suspected of planning a coup. A joint statement from the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Criminal Police said the three detainees, all German citizens, are suspected of “belonging to a terrorist organization and planning high treason,” during raids in various areas in southern and eastern Germany targeting six people. Meanwhile, about 20 people suspected of belonging to this conspiratorial group are being tried in three separate trials that began in spring 2024 in Stuttgart, Munich, and Frankfurt, including the network leader, an aristocrat named Henry XIII, known as “Prince Reuss.” The conspirators’ plan would have led to appointing “Prince Reuss,” a septuagenarian businessman from a lineage of regional rulers, as Germany’s president.

Investigators stated that the three men arrested yesterday participated in April 2022, along with other group members, in firearms training at a former German army site, preparing for a potential attack on the German parliament, the Bundestag. This scenario resembles the attack by Donald Trump’s supporters on the U.S. Capitol. Besides Henry XIII, the group fueled by the far right includes a former German army officer, a former special forces soldier (KSK), a former police officer, and a judge who was a member of parliament for the far-right Alternative for Germany party. They are all said to be influenced by the “Reichsbürger” ideology, a movement that denies the legitimacy of the Federal Republic of Germany.