German police on Monday raided the homes and workplaces of a policeman and another person suspected of planning to capture and kill left-wing politicians because of their views on immigration, authorities said.
The suspects, who feared Germany’s refugee policies would impoverish the country, had begun to stockpile food and ammunition and plan attacks, the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
“The suspects see the crisis they fear taking hold as an opportunity to capture left-wing political representatives and kill them with their weapons,” the statement said.
The suspects, who had drawn up a list of target names, planned “serious violence threatening to the state”, the prosecutor’s office said.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a weekend newspaper interview she had no regrets about her 2015 decision to leave Germany’s borders open to hundreds of thousands of refugees and added she would not be deterred from campaigning by angry hecklers.
A spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office said neither suspect had been arrested and no arrest warrant had been issued yet.
Pictures on the website of the mass-circulation daily Bild showed black-clad police, some in balaclavas, carrying out searches.
The suspected policeman worked in the eastern town of Ludwigslust, some 150 km (90 miles) northwest of Berlin. Disciplinary measures had been initiated against him, the state interior ministry of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern said.
Police also carried out raids on the properties of people linked to the two suspects, but who were not themselves suspects, the prosecutor’s office added. One of these was also a policeman, the state interior ministry said.
The suspects had been in contact with other people on chatrooms.