Were there plans for an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan in this country? In 2019, investigators found more than 100 weapons during searches. However, the accusation of forming a criminal organization could not be substantiated.
After more than three years, the Stuttgart public prosecutor’s office has dropped the investigation into 57 suspects for the formation of a German branch of the Ku Klux Klan.
Previously, she had focused on a building in Bremen and one in the district of Holzminden (Lower Saxony).
The public prosecutor’s office in Stuttgart could not determine “with the certainty required for the indictment” that the purpose of the group was to commit crimes, as a spokeswoman said. The investigations into the formation of a criminal organization were therefore discontinued in the spring. Südwestrundfunk reported first.
Chat messages put investigators on the track
Security authorities had searched twelve apartments during the investigation in January 2019 – in addition to Bremen and Lower Saxony also in Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The accused, who were between 17 and 59 years old at the time, were suspected of having formed a group called the “National Socialist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Germany”.
The investigators secured more than 100 weapons and numerous storage media. They tracked down the accused via chat messages from a confiscated cell phone. Parts of the group are said to have planned to arm themselves and had fantasies of violence, as it was said at the time.
According to the spokeswoman, the investigators have not yet been able to prove that the suspects wanted to assert their interests by using violence or committing criminal offenses.
Investigations into violations of the Weapons Act and the Narcotics Act are ongoing against 23 suspects whose places of residence are not specified. They are also still being investigated on suspicion of incitement to hatred and the use of symbols belonging to unconstitutional and terrorist organizations. The public prosecutor’s office has no information on whether the alleged group is still active.
