By Marco Krefting,dpa I Monday, May 15, 2023
BERLIN- Prosecutors in Germany are bringing charges against four alleged members of the neo-Nazi martial arts group “Knockout 51” for membership of a criminal and terrorist organization.
The accused – who are all German – are also charged with multiple acts of causing bodily harm, attacks on law enforcement officers, breach of the peace, attempted prisoner release and violations of the weapons law. The State Protection Senate of the Thuringian Higher Regional Court must now decide whether to admit the charges.
Three of the accused, including one who is said to be the ringleader, are alleged to have founded the group “Knockout 51” sometime before the end of March 2019, the federal prosecutor’s office announced in Karlsruhe on Monday.
“This was a right-wing extremist martial arts group that attracted young, nationalist-minded men under the guise of joint physical training, deliberately indoctrinated them with right-wing extremist ideas and trained them for physical confrontations with police officers, members of the politically left-wing scene and other persons deemed worth fighting,” it said.
The group had set itself the aim of killing persons of the left-wing extremist scene sometime before April 2021.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office lists 14 incidents in its statement. According to the office’s statement, the accused mingled in demonstrations against anti-coronavirus measures, tried to impose order in what they called a “Nazi neighbourhood,” broke bones of several people in various incidents, and threw heavy stones at the youth and constituency office of the left-wing Linke party in Eisenach in central Germany.
The group, which reportedly had 10 active members, held its training sessions at the state office of the neo-nazi NPD. Knockout 51 had also networked with other violent right-wing extremist martial arts groups across the country.
The four men have been in custody since their arrest in early April 2022 during a large-scale crackdown on the militant neo-Nazi scene across Germany.
At the time, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said it was investigating 50 suspected right-wing extremists.
