AfD politician accused of supporting terrorism. The investigation raises questions about the party’s radical ideas

The German prosecutor’s office on Thursday morning searched the apartment of an unnamed deputy of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the Thuringian city of Ilmenau on suspicion of supporting a terrorist organization, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said. TASR informs about it according to the report of the DPA agency.

• The German prosecutor’s office searched the real estate of an AfD member of parliament.
• The searches are related to the plan to kidnap Minister Lauterbach.
• The deputy is suspected of supporting the terrorist group Empire Group.
• The Empire Group planned actions to end Germany’s democratic establishment.
• Four of the group’s leaders were sentenced to prison in March.

The spokesman of the General Prosecutor’s Office in Thuringia said that the authorities also searched the MP’s other two properties. According to the spokesman, an arrest warrant was not issued for the deputy.

Plans to kidnap ministers

These searches are related to the investigation of the planned kidnapping of former Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, who fell out of favor with far-right groups for anti-pandemic measures.

According to the spokesman, the unnamed AfD MP is suspected of supporting the Empire Group and of helping to prepare and incite treason, the spokesman said.

Extremism in Germany

According to the DPA, the Empire Group is a far-right terrorist organization that was founded in January 2022 with the aim of ending the democratic establishment in Germany and replacing it with an authoritarian system of government modeled after the 1871 German Reich Constitution.

To achieve this goal, the group planned specific acts of violence, such as bombings of energy facilities or the aforementioned kidnapping of Lauterbach.

In March, the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz sentenced four leading figures of the group to several years in prison.