A retired teacher has been arrested in Germany on terrorism charges in connection with an alleged plot to kidnap the country's health minister.
The news in April that Health Minister Karl Lauterbach - at the time one of the country's most high-profile politicians due to the coronavirus pandemic - was a possible victim of a kidnap plot caused outrage and led to several arrests earlier this year.
On Thursday prosecutors accused the detained woman of being a senior figure in the group said to be behind the plot.
She is alleged to have given instructions on how to advance and coordinate the group's plans with concrete deadlines, as well as being involved in the procurement of weapons and explosives.
The retired teacher is also said to have held recruitment talks with potential candidates to join the association.
She was arrested in the state of Saxony and her home was searched. A magistrate will later decide whether she should be remanded in custody.
The suspect is accused of belonging to a movement that rejects German constitution and instead believes that the German Reich continues to exist on the basis of the constitution of 1871.
Four of her suspected accomplices were arrested on April 13. Shortly afterwards, federal investigators took over the investigation.
The group had apparently set itself the goal of triggering civil war-like conditions in Germany and thus ultimately bringing about the overthrow of the federal government and parliamentary democracy.
An electricity blackout and the kidnapping of Lauterbach were part of this plan.
The former teacher had already been deprived of her pension because of her so-called "Reichsbürger" ideology.
