BERLIN (AA) – The trial of four suspects accused of forming a neo-Nazi terrorist organization opened in the southern German city of Munich Wednesday.
The four far-right extremists, aged between 23 and 57, are charged with forming “The Oldschool Society” (OSS), which allegedly planned attacks against mosques and asylum centers in 2015.
Senior Public Prosecutor Joern Hauschild told the Munich court that the suspects Andreas H., 57, Markus W., 40, Denise Vanessa G., 23, and Olaf O., 48, were leaders of the group, which was formed in 2015, and had around 15 members.
He accused the suspects of planning an attack in 2015 against an asylum center near the eastern city of Leipzig, with the full understanding that their actions may lead to possible deaths.
The suspects acquired large amounts of illegal firecrackers to make explosives, according to the indictment presented to the court. They were also accused of discussing their plans over the phone, Facebook, and instant messaging apps. In one of the messages intercepted by security services, group members discussed blowing up mosques.
German police had arrested four OSS members in May last year and found illegal firecrackers and gas pistols in their houses.
The OSS is the second far-right terrorist group uncovered in Germany after the National Socialist Underground (NSU).
German authorities have intensified their crackdown on far-right structures in recent years, in the aftermath of the NSU scandal, which showed that the security services long underestimated the threat of far-right violence.
The neo-Nazi group NSU killed at least eight Turkish immigrants, a Greek worker and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007, all apparently without arousing the suspicions of the German police or its intelligence services.
The German public first learned about the existence of NSU in November 2011, when two members of the group reportedly died in a murder-suicide following an unsuccessful bank robbery.
Until 2011, Germany’s police and intelligence service excluded any racial motive for the murders and instead treated immigrant families as suspects in the case and harassed them for alleged connections with mafia groups and drug traffickers.
