Germany Arrests Suspects in QAnon-Inspired Coup Plot

More than 3,000 police officers including special forces conducted raids at 150 properties across Germany, Italy and Austria, in one of the largest operations of its kind in recent history, officials said.

“This organization has, according to our knowledge, set the goal of using violence and military means to overthrow the existing liberal democratic order in Germany,” federal prosecutor Peter Frank told reporters Wednesday.

The far-right group, whose suspected leaders included a former elite paratrooper commander, had been attempting to recruit police and armed-forces members, and had sought to set up terrorist cells across Germany to help it install and maintain a military government, according to the prosecutor.

“The suspects are united in a deep rejection of the Federal Republic of Germany, which has in the course of time developed in a decision to initiate a violent coup for which they had made specific preparations,” the prosecutor said.

“The members of the organization understood that their endeavor could only be realized by using military means and violence against representatives of the state. This includes committing murders.”

“The people who had been arrested subscribe to conspiracy myths composed of different narratives of the Reichsbürger and the QAnon ideologies,” Mr. Frank said.

QAnon is a far-right, loosely organized network and community of believers who embrace a range of outlandish and unsubstantiated beliefs. It has spread worldwide from the U.S. and has been linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The German Reichsbürger, or Citizens of the Reich, movement doesn’t recognize the authority of the postwar government. Members have printed their own passports and other documents, and set up their own schools. Some factions seek to re-establish the German Empire that was dismantled after World War I.

Outside the U.S., QAnon online channels have their largest subscriber base in Germany, according to several assessments by extremism researchers. The conspiracy has been spreading rapidly in Germany since 2020, especially in the ranks of critics of the government’s Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, according to the German domestic intelligence agency. 

The agency said it considers the ideology a potential source of violence given its strongly anti-Semitic message, its legitimation of violence and its opposition to the state. In August 2020, protesters opposed to pandemic restrictions, some of them carrying “Q” banners, were blocked by police as they tried to storm the Reichstag building, home to the lower house of parliament.

There was no indication that members of the alleged cell were in contact with QAnon sympathizers in the U.S. 

The people detained on Wednesday included a sergeant serving with the KSK, the special military command of Germany, and a former lawmaker, as well as several former servicemen, including two colonels, officials said.

One of the alleged ringleaders was named by the prosecutor as Heinrich XIII P. R. The website of the Der Spiegel news weekly and other German news publications identified the man as Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss, a 71-year-old prince and known far-right extremist. In a conference speech posted on YouTube in 2019, Mr. Reuss espoused anti-Semitic views and conspiracies about historic events and German politics.

Calls to a number appearing on what claims to be the prince’s website went unanswered and a lawyer for him couldn’t be identified.

Another alleged conspirator was identified by the prosecutor as Birgit M.-W. Der Spiegel and other German publications said the suspect was Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, 58, a judge in Berlin and a former member of parliament for the nationalist Alternative for Germany party. 

A lawyer who has in the past represented Ms. Malsack-Winkemann declined to comment. 

After leaving parliament, Ms. Malsack-Winkemann resumed work as a judge in March. The Berlin state government later sought to have her removed from the bench, arguing that she had promoted extremist positions online and as a lawmaker. The Berlin administrative court rejected the government’s request in October, saying that it violated the principle of an independent justice.

Ms. Malsack-Winkemann was temporarily suspended as judge on Wednesday after an intervention of the president of the Berlin Regional Court, a spokeswoman for the court wrote in an email Wednesday. The spokeswoman didn’t mention the arrest.

Mr. Frank, the prosecutor, said eight of the people arrested had been remanded into custody by a judge.

One of the suspects arrested was a former police officer who had been involved in securing Jewish sites in the German state of Lower Saxony, according to the American Jewish Committee, a nonprofit.

“It now must be established that there is no security risk [for these sites],” the organization said in a tweet.

The suspected conspirators had set up several chat channels, primarily on social network Telegram, and had congregated in a property that one of them owned, officials said.

Weapons were secured during the raid and investigators are probing an alleged plan by the suspects to storm the German parliament and arrest legislators in an action that they hoped would bring about a collapse of the German government, according to the prosecutor.

It remains unclear, however, whether the group planned an imminent attack, or whether it had the capacity to pull out a coup in the 84-million-strong country. In addition to the 25 people who were taken into custody, there are another 27 suspects who haven’t been arrested, prosecutors said.

The suspects had been meeting in a format they called the council, a mock government cabinet headed by Mr. Reuss and designated ministers, which was supported by a military arm, according to prosecutors. The body was meant to govern Germany with the support of a military arm consisting of several retired officers in their 60s and one active serviceman. 

“The terror organization that was unearthed today was driven by violent takeover fantasies and conspiracy ideologies, according to the current state of the investigation,” said German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. The police raid was conducted in very dangerous circumstances but fortunately no one was injured, Ms. Faeser added.

Ms. Faeser said that it was “especially bitter” that a former legislator was implicated in the alleged conspiracy.

One of the alleged leaders had established contacts with representatives of Russia in Germany to facilitate the planned takeover, the prosecutor said, adding that there was no evidence that the Russian officials responded positively to his advances. The Russian citizen who was arrested as a helper of the group is suspected of having facilitated such contacts.

There has been no involvement by the Russian government, which only found out about the case from media reports, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The Russian Embassy in Berlin said it learned of the raids from the news and was unfamiliar with any Russian citizens connected. Russian diplomatic representations in Germany don’t have contact with members of terrorist organizations, the embassy said.

There are more than 20,000 adherents of the Reichsbürger movement in Germany, including 2,100 potentially violent supporters, according to the latest annual report of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

Several police officers and members of the armed forces have in the past been arrested in raids connected to the Reichsbürger and similar groups. While members of such groups from the ranks the armed forces and security and law-enforcement agencies constitute a small minority, the presence of rogue networks within the security establishment is an acutely sensitive matter because of Germany’s Nazi past.

The group that was foiled Wednesday had been set up around November 2021, driven by a belief that Germany is governed by a so-called “deep state” and would soon be freed by a so-called “alliance,” an alleged secret society of officials and military officers from various countries including the U.S. and Russia, the prosecutor said.

The group is suspected of having planned armed attacks on government institutions, said Germany’s justice minister, Marco Buschmann.

“Democracy is defending itself,” Mr. Buschmann tweeted Wednesday.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com