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NEO-NAZIS

Swiss participate in raids against neo-Nazis

Police launched raids in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland on Wednesday against six suspected members of a far-right "Werewolf" cell modelled on late-Second World War plans for a Nazi guerrilla resistance.

Swiss participate in raids against neo-Nazis
Kristian Vikernes, Norwegian alleged neo-Nazi arrested in France. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Four suspects in the three countries, plus two neo-Nazis in detention in Switzerland, were suspected of having formed a terrorist organization that was considering violent attacks, said Germany's federal prosecution office.

The raids came a day after French police arrested Kristian Vikernes, a notorious Norwegian alleged neo-Nazi living on a farm in the rural region of Corrèze.

Vikernes was arrested over fears he was plotting a massacre similar to that carried out in Norway by terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. 
   
The aim of Wednesday's coordinated raids, which targeted homes, business premises and jail cells and involved about 50 police in Germany alone, was to gather evidence against the suspects, prosecutors said.

No arrests were made.

The men "are suspected of having founded a right-wing extremist 'werewolf command'," said prosecutors, referring to the Nazi's unrealized plan for a clandestine "Werewolf" commando force that would mount a rebellion against victorious Allied forces in Germany.
   
"The group's apparent objective was to eradicate the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany," said prosecutors in a statement.

ALLEGED NEO-NAZI ARRESTED IN FRANCE
   
Members of the extremist group were believed to have developed their own electronic encryption programme to evade surveillance.
   
The prosecutors said that until now the investigators had gathered "no actual evidence of concrete preparations for attacks".
   
The raids in Germany took places in the northern states of Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

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POLICE

German police arrest ‘NSU 2.0’ suspect over neo-Nazi threats

German police have arrested a man they suspect of sending threatening letters inspired by a shadowy neo-Nazi cell that committed a string of racist murders in the 2000s, prosecutors said Tuesday.

German police arrest 'NSU 2.0' suspect over neo-Nazi threats
At a rally in Wiesbaden in July 2020, a protester holds a sign that says: Solidarity with those affected by NSU 2.0”. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Arne Dedert

The 53-year-old unemployed German national had been convicted in the past of crimes linked to the far right, the prosecutor’s office for the western city of Frankfurt said.

He is “strongly suspected” of having sent, since August 2018, a series “of threatening letters with hateful, insulting and threatening content” under the pseudonym “NSU 2.0”, the prosecutor said.

The name refers to the National Socialist Underground, a neo-Nazi extremist group uncovered in 2011 that murdered 10 people and planted three bombs.

The letters were mainly addressed to public officials, notably members of the federal parliament and that of the Hesse region.

Investigators had initially suspected that the man was linked to the police themselves, as information on the people threatened had been collected from police stations.

But prosecutors said the person detained was not a police officer. The suspect was taken into custody at his Berlin apartment during a search.

READ ALSO: Fears over Germany’s far-right grow after Halle attack

The assassination in June 2019 of pro-migration politician Walter Lübcke shocked the country and highlighted the growing threat of right-wing extremism.

Previously, the NSU was able to carry out the murders of eight Turkish immigrants, a Greek and a German policewoman as investigators focused their probe in error on members of Germany’s immigrant communities.

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