Over 200 police and state officials were involved in the swoop to arrest the five, aged between 18 and 39, who are suspected of plotting to bomb shelters housing asylum seekers.
A police car patrols in Attendorn, Germany. (Photo: AFP/Bernd Thissen)
BERLIN: German police arrested five people near Dresden on
Tuesday (Apr 19) who they suspected of forming a far-right militant
group and accused of attacks on asylum seekers and political opponents,
the public prosecutor's office said.
Over 200 police and state officials were involved in the
swoop to arrest the five, aged between 18 and 39, who are suspected of
plotting to bomb shelters housing asylum seekers.
"According to preliminary investigations, the aim of the
group was to carry out explosives attacks on homes for asylum seekers as
well as the homes of political enemies," the federal prosecutor's
office said in a statement.
The suspects, four men and a woman, are suspected of forming the
"Freital Group" last year. The group is named after a town outside
Dresden in eastern Germany, where anti-immigrant sentiment runs
particularly high.The statement said the suspects stockpiled hundreds of fireworks from the Czech Republic to use in attacks. The assaults included using fireworks to blow out the windows of the kitchen of a refugee shelter in Freital in September 2015.
"The residents of the home only escaped injury from the flying shards of the shattered glass pane because no one was in the kitchen at the time," the prosecutor's office said.
A second attack the following month blamed on the group involved suspects hurling fireworks and stones at a building housing leftist activists. No one was injured.
Prosecutors said that the cell also attacked another refugee shelter in Freital in November last year, where a resident suffered cuts to his face from flying glass.
They said the investigation would seek to determine if the organisation was responsible for further violence.
Small towns in the eastern state of Saxony such as Freital earned nationwide notoriety last year as groups of neo-Nazis and angry residents hurled abuse at people fleeing war and misery - and rocks at police sent to protect those seeking a safe haven.
Federal police in 2015 recorded more than 800 attacks on refugee shelters in Germany, which let in nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers last year. Most of the attacks were concentrated in the former communist east of the country.
- Reuters/AFP/ec
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