BERLIN -- Special forces in Germany arrested 25 people suspected of supporting a domestic terrorism organization that planned to overthrow the government and form its own state, the federal prosecutor said on Wednesday.
In early-morning raids carried out across the country, Special Forces officers detained people believed to be members and supporters of the group, which prosecutors said had been formed in the past year, and was operating on the conviction that Germany is currently being ruled by members of a so-called deep state that needed to be overthrown. Prosecutors said two other people had been arrested outside Germany, one in Austria and another in Italy.
The prosecutors described the group, which they did not identify, as being influenced by the ideologies of the conspiracy group QAnon and a right-wing German conspiracy group called the Reichsb rger, or Citizens of the Reich, which believes that Germany's post-World War II republic is not a sovereign nation but a corporation set up by the Allies who won the war.
Many of those arrested had military training and included former German soldiers, including the army of the former East Germany, and were known to have been heavily armed with weapons acquired illegally. The group was most likely to be formed in late 2021, the prosecutors said.