Four alleged members of a “far-right terrorist organization”, suspected of violence and combat training, were arrested on Wednesday in Germany during a major operation targeting the neo-Nazi movement, announced the federal prosecutor.
Some 800 investigators searched, in eleven regions of the country, around sixty places as part of an investigation targeting 46 people, the justice said in a press release.
The leader of the small group called “Knockout 51”, Leon R., as well as three other members, are suspected of having organized in Eisenach, in Thuringia (center), “street combat training for young sympathizers of nationalist ideas” that they “indoctrinated” to form an “extremist combat group”, according to the prosecution.
The group has “attempted to establish” in Eisenach a “Nazi district” by organizing rounds since the spring of 2021 with the aim of “establishing themselves as law enforcement”.
The four men injured several people on this occasion, some of them seriously. During demonstrations against anti-COVID health measures between August 2020 and March 2021, members of “Knockout 51” clashed with the police and counter-demonstrators, further specifies the prosecution.
The searches are part of a broader investigation targeting since 2019 the far-right group “Atomwaffen Division Deutschland” (Nuclear Weapons Division), the German branch of an American neo-Nazi group of the same name, as well as members of the small group “Sonderkommando 1418” (special commando 1418).
With several deadly attacks, the terrorist threat from the far right has exceeded the risk of a jihadist attack in Germany in recent years and the government has placed this movement at the forefront of threats to public order. Anti-Semitic attacks are also on the rise in the country.
The murder in June 2019 by a neo-Nazi activist of Walter Lübcke, elected from the conservative party which defended the policy of welcoming migrants from former Chancellor Angela Merkel, awakened the specter of this “brown terrorism”.