in a press conference underway in Germany, they are
addressing a suspected attempt from an extremist group
to overthrow the government of that country. Thousands
of police raids took place earlier this morning to
curtail a potential attack. Year 25 people have been
arrested so far. Correspondent Trent Murray is
following this story closely fo us. He joins us from
Berlin Trent, one of the latest updates you're heari
j an extraordinary story. It almost reads like a
Hollywood script, but it is very real and it has got
the german government very concerned 3000 police
officers across 11 different states this morning
carrying out dawn raids on this group that they say was
in the advanced stages of trying to storm the House of
Representatives here in Berlin, take lawmakers hostage
and then overthrow the government. Now we understand
that this group was at the far right persuasion. They
had spent the past two months acquiring weapons
training people and also concerning lee for the german
military going after both veterans and serving soldiers
to try and join their ranks. In fact, we understand t
ringleader in all of this is a member of the former
german royal family, a minor member, but nevertheless,
from that old monarchist circle as well as a former
paratrooper who was designated to become the new defi
Defense Secretary in this new government, extremely
concerning developments. We know this extremist group
was first put on the radar for law enforcement earli
this year when it was uncovered that they wanted to
kidnap the health secretary here during the covid 19
lockdowns. It is from that arrest that they were then
able to untangle this even bigger suspected crime. An
for that reason, there is real concern just about how
far they were able to develop this plan, in which the
said definitely would have become violent given the
communications that they were able to intercept. The
group allegedly discussed that lawmakers would have to
be killed or assassinated as part of the plans, but
that was a necessary step in order to reach that
eventual goal of forming a new government. Such an
incredible story that is killing an eerily familiar in
some ways, a statement from prosecutors that this grou
is alleged to have Q and an ideology, we're familiar
with that in our country as well. What do we know about
these people and what was there um motivation exactly
here Yeah, so it is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of
the group. So, the citizens of the Reich effective
encompasses people from the far right, quite literally
neo Nazi groups. You've kind of got these conspiracy
theorists, very much the german offshoot of Cuban on in
some ways really into that theory that there is a deep
state in control of the government and that that real
order needs to be returned. But then you've sort of got,
I suppose some of the historical elements of all of
this, within Germany kind of monarchists, that one
return of the king. Of course Germany hasn't had a
royal family since before World War II, but there is
some of them involved in all of this. And you've just
got anarchists as well who want to see the downfall of
the government. They've all been brought together under
this umbrella. We know a lot of communications
happening online on secret messaging groups and on
messaging boards and forums and the like police now,
just probing through all of that. One particularly
interesting element that we know law enforcement is
analyzing is that one of the members of the group
arrested was actually a Russian citizen. And we
understand some outreach was made from this extremist
group to the Russian embassy for help and support in
overthrowing the government. The Russians are saying
that as a blanket rule, they don't deal with any sorts
of terror groups and have denied being involved at all.
We've had so many discussions in recent months ab
this wave of anti democratic extremism, not just in our
country but around the world in a chilling example of
that yet again, this time unfolding in in Germany,
remarkable and disturbing story a lot of levels. Uh,
correspondent Trent Murray, tha you for hopping on
the air with us quickly to give us the very latest,
we'll check back in with you later in the newscast.
Thank you so much