BBC Information in Berlin
BBCA self-declared “king” of Germany and three of his senior “topics” have been arrested and their group banned for trying to overthrow the state.
Peter Fitzek, 59, was amongst these arrested in morning raids throughout seven states on Tuesday, which concerned about 800 safety personnel.
The federal government banned their group, the Reichsbürger, or “residents of the Reich”, which seeks to determine the Königreich Deutschland, or “Kingdom of Germany”.
Alexander Dobrindt, German’s inside minister, accused the group of trying to “undermine the rule of regulation” by creating an alternate state and spreading “antisemitic conspiracy narratives to again up their supposed declare to authority”.
His ministry introduced the dissolution of the group, and accused it of financing itself by “financial prison buildings”.
Fitzek, a former chef and karate teacher, calls himself “king” and recognized himself to judges as “Peter the First” in a earlier court docket case.
He had himself topped in 2012 whereas wearing ermine robes and brandishing a medieval sword. Since then he has been shopping for land and property throughout Germany.
Reichsbürgers have their very own forex, flag and ID playing cards, and wish to arrange separate banking and well being programs.
Fitzek claims to have hundreds of followers – or “topics”.
In an interview with the BBC in 2022 he denied having any violent intentions, but additionally described the German state as “damaging and sick”.
“I’ve no real interest in being a part of this fascist and satanic system,” he informed the BBC’s Jenny Hill, when she visited his “kingdom” in japanese Germany.
Fitzek has repeatedly clashed with the authorities and refused to abide by German legal guidelines, typically in what seems to be in a publicity-seeking method.
ReutersHe has beforehand been jailed for repeatedly driving with no licence, following a choice at hand his again in a symbolic rejection of the regulation. On the finish of 1 trial session, Fitzek was seen moving into his automotive in entrance of the court docket and driving off.
Fitzek is certainly one of round 25,000 Reichsbürger in Germany. Numbers have been rising over the previous few years.
Many are right-wing extremists who peddle racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories. They refuse to recognise the authority of safety forces and lots of possess unlawful arms, which has led to shoot-outs with police. Officers say that round 2,500 are probably violent and that 1,350 are classed as right-wing extremists.
In 2022 dozens of individuals had been arrested, lots of them Reichsbürger, for plotting to overthrow the German authorities in Berlin. They had been accused of planning a violent coup, which included kidnapping the well being minister, to create “civil warfare situations” to deliver down German democracy.
Previously, Reichsbürger had been typically dismissed as eccentric cranks due to their outlandish concepts.
However because the far proper has grown in energy politically in Germany over the past decade, officers now see them as a severe menace.
The federal prosecutor’s workplace in Karlsruhe stated Fitzek was arrested together with three different suspected ringleaders of the group, which it categorized as a prison organisation.
Because the “so-called supreme sovereign”, Fitzek had “management and decision-making energy in all key areas”, the workplace stated.
“The ‘Kingdom of Germany’ considers itself a sovereign state throughout the that means of worldwide regulation and strives to increase its claimed ‘nationwide territory’ to the borders of the German Empire of 1871,” it added in an announcement.
