Home of far-right German lawmaker raided over terrorist plot

The home of a politician from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was raided on Thursday on suspicion of support for a terrorist organization.

A spokesman for the Thuringian attorney general’s office said the man’s flat in the eastern town of Ilmenau and two other properties were searched to secure evidence.

According to the spokesman, no arrests were planned.

The searches are connected to investigations into a planned kidnapping of former health minister Karl Lauterbach.

The AfD politician is suspected of supporting the so-called “Empire Group” and of aiding and abetting the preparation of a treasonous enterprise against the federal government, the spokesman said.

The group is a far-right terrorist organization that was founded in January 2022 at the latest with the aim of ending Germany’s free democratic order and replacing it with an authoritarian system of government modelled on the 1871 constitution of the German Empire.

To achieve this goal, the group planned specific acts of violence such as bomb attacks on the energy supply, the kidnapping of Lauterbach and the reconnaissance of railway signal boxes.

In March, four ringleaders of the group were sentenced to several years in prison by the Higher Regional Court of Koblenz.