The trial begins against the network that planned to carry out a coup d'état in Germany

The first of three major trials to be held against the far-right group led by Heinrich the Stuttgart Regional Court. It will be the largest legal process in defense of the State in the history of the Federal Republic and for this reason the Federal Prosecutor's Office has decided to start the process. “We do not want a spectacle macro trial in a gym,” they explain.

The Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, has declared that the important thing, “in any case, is to demonstrate the strength of our rule of law and that the largest Reichsbürger terrorist network is only tried and held accountable (…) for its military plans to overthrow the current regime”. The minister added that “we will maintain our tough approach until we have completely revealed and dismantled these structures.”. “No one who belongs to these extremist circles should feel safe.”

The 'Reichsbürger', citizens of the Reich, do not recognize the current form of State. The group, heavily influenced by far-right groups, is under the surveillance of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, internal espionage. It is estimated that they belong to nearly 23,000 people throughout Germany, 2,300 of them willing to use violence.. And that's what, presumably, they were willing to do..

In total, 27 people will be tried for planning to take over the Bundestag (Parliament) to carry out a coup d'état and accepting that there could have been deaths. They have all been detained in different prisons since December 2022, when the plot was dismantled.. In Stuttgart there will be nine people prosecuted. They are charged with membership in a terrorist organization under section 129a of the German Penal Code (StGB) and with preparation for treason under section 83 of the StGB.. The ringleaders of the plot, including Reuss, will be tried in Frankfurt starting on May 21, and the rest starting on June 18 in Munich.

In Stuttgart, the process has started with the investigation of a shooting in Reutlingen in March 2023. The defendant, Markus L., who had not been arrested with most of the others in December 2022, resisted a house search and shot at police officers with a rapid-fire semi-automatic rifle, wounding two of them. He has now also been charged with attempted murder.

The Reutlingen incident could also be relevant for the other defendants, as it could serve as proof that the Prinz-Reuß group was really prepared to commit the most serious crimes.. The coup itself did not go beyond a rather vague planning phase.

Once the investigation into the Reutlingen shootings is concluded, the main focus of attention in Stuttgart will be on the “military arm” of the group. Its leader, Rüdiger von Pescatore, a former officer, will also be tried in Frankfurt because he was also a member of the leading group.

In the medium term, the military arm should include 286 national defense companies. When the police carried out the coup, the organization had already stored 382 firearms with 148,000 pieces of ammunition. In particular, the focus of attention will probably be on Schutzkompanie 221, which was to be in charge of the area between Tübingen and Freudenstadt.

The group was arrested shortly after a large-scale anti-terrorist raid in several German federal states and abroad, shortly after St. Nicholas Day 2022 was announced.. As head of a new state would be Heinrich XIII Prince Reuß. The populist Alternative for Germany (AFD) member of the Bundestag and former Berlin judge Birgit Malsack-Winkemann Malsack-Winkemann was planned to be Minister of Justice.

The nine defendants from Stuttgart, all of them held in different prisons to prevent them from communicating, have 22 lawyers, of which four were chosen by them.. The process will be long and complex. More than 300 witnesses have been summoned, including 270 police officers. The 18 defendants in the other two trials could also appear as witnesses in Stuttgart if they wish to testify.

Security measures are strict. The defendants sit in an area of the courtroom separated by a glass partition.. They can only talk to their lawyers through an intercom system. The auditorium is also separated by glass, although only at half height.

In principle, the trial is scheduled to last until early 2025. Hearings are scheduled to be held twice a week.. It is not yet possible to estimate how long the trial will actually last.

In the case of organizational crimes like this one, trials always have two major issues in the practice of evidence. On the one hand, it concerns the organization itself, its foundation, its structures and internal decision-making processes, and on the other, the involvement of individual defendants and their individual contributions to the crime.

In terrorism trials, the main characteristics of the organization are usually known. The trials against the Kurdish PKK or the Tamil LTTE, for example, have been going on for a long time. Here you can resort to the conclusions of other sentences if they are not too old. In the parallel proceedings concerning the Prinz-Reuß group, however, the foundations of the association must be established separately in each of the three trials.