Germany To Arrest More Suspects After Coup Plot Swoop

"More arrests are likely in the coming days," said Holger Muench, head of the federal police office on Thursday. He told broadcaster ARD that there were now 54 suspects in the case.

Meanwhile, the German authorities on Thursday ordered 23 people to be held for questioning.

On Wednesday, 3,000 officers conducted raids at 137 sites across 11 German federal states, as well as in Austria and Italy, to arrest members and supporters of the group suspected of plotting to overthrow the government in Berlin by force.

The group, which was linked to a far-right extremist group in the United States, was said to be convinced modern Germany was run by a “deep state” conspiracy that was about to be exposed by an alliance of German intelligence agencies and the militaries of foreign states.

“Everything will be turned upside down: the current public prosecutors and judges, as well as the heads of the health departments and their superiors will find themselves in the dock at Nuremberg 2.0,” one of the suspects in the case said in a message posted on Telegram minutes before the start of police crackdown on Wednesday, the newspaper Die Zeit reported.

While the suspects believed their aims could be achieved only by military means and with force, prosecutors said, it was unclear whether the group had managed to amass any serious kind of arsenal to reach their objectives.

Many of the suspects in the case are over 50 years old and some are former members of the military, who have allegedly stolen weapons from the army’s arms store during their years in service, while others hold arms licenses.