Hannibal (network)

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“Hannibal” was the online username of the Bundeswehr sub-officer André S., who had been the administrator of a network of prepper groups since autumn 2015 and coordinated. The "Hannibal" network became known from 2017 through the terror investigations against Bundeswehr soldiers . According to its own information, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) was already aware of at least parts of the network at the end of 2016.

The associated chats were divided into regions (north, east, south, west) and consisted of groups in Germany , Austria and Switzerland . The participants prepared for a collapse of the state order on “Day X”. These include the right-wing extremist group Nordkreuz and its offshoots, members of the Uniter association , reservists, officers of the criminal police , members of special operations units (SEKs), judges, employees of the constitutional protection and other German security authorities. André S. belonged to the Special Forces Command (KSK) in Calw and co-founded the Uniter association.

Observers interpret the network, the arsenals, target practice and enemy lists of the Prepper as an attempt to build a "shadow army" (underground army). According to chat logs, order lists and statements made by some preppers, they wanted to prepare for an armed coup and mass killings of political opponents.

Investigation process

Franco A.

The daily newspaper (taz) announced the network on November 16, 2018 with a detailed report for which three journalists had researched nationwide since September 2017. The starting point was the arrest of the right-wing extremist Bundeswehr officer Franco A. on April 26, 2017, who pretended to be a Syrian refugee and had obtained an illegal weapon. So his alleged terrorist plans were discovered and the investigations against Bundeswehr soldiers expanded. Whether the list of target persons found at Franco A. suggests a killing intention and accomplices knew about it was disputed in 2018 between the Attorney General and the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main . In November 2019, the Federal Court of Justice decided that the charge on suspicion of terrorism should be admitted and referred the case back to the Frankfurt / Main Higher Regional Court.

Maximilian T.

As a result of the suspicion against Franco A., the Federal Prosecutor also investigated Lieutenant Maximilian T. (* 1990 in Seligenstadt). Like Franco A., T. has been part of the 291 Jäger Battalion in Illkirch (France) since 2016 . Since 2010 there had been more right-wing incidents there, such as a swastika on the barracks floor and Hitler greetings . A witness had told a Bundeswehr general about a “right-wing radical network” in Illkirch, Hammelburg and Donaueschingen and about the inactivity of the site managers. Franco A. and Maximilian T. were known to their superiors because of right-wing incidents. In their chat group a swastika was sent, a hotel room, in their barracks Wehrmacht - devotional equipped. In the course of their family contacts, T's sister became A's friend. In June 2014 T. took part in a target practice in Grafenwöhr, Bavaria, during which a Walther P38 pistol disappeared. A first lieutenant from Augustdorf, who knew T., told a comrade about a group in Illkirch that was trying to collect weapons and ammunition for a civil war .

Since then, the Military Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD) has observed T. and learned that he had complained about the German asylum policy in 2015 and had been looking for colleagues for an organization against it. When asked by the MAD, he only confirmed the meeting, not the content of the conversation. The Ministry of Defense suspended its investigation of the incident in 2016 with no result. By then A. and T. had set up a storage depot and had become members of the prepper network founded by "Hannibal". A Bundeswehr soldier from T's officer course helped set up the network. This belonged to the Prepperchat Group East, according to his own statement, involuntarily and briefly. The chats covered, among other things, troop movements, the number of refugees to Germany, and civil war scenarios.

In January 2017, Franco A., T. and his sister visited a reservist in Vienna whom they knew from Illkirch. According to later self-statements, which T. confirmed, A. accidentally found a loaded Wehrmacht pistol there, took it and forgot it again. It was not until the following day that he remembered the weapon again at Vienna Schwechat airport and then hid it in an airport toilet and sent a photo of the hiding place to his comrades via the chat group. In February 2017, A. returned with a simple plane ticket and was arrested while trying to take the weapon. Among other things, a document with the title “Mujahideen Explosives Handbook” was found with him. A. was released after interrogation. In April 2017, he was finally arrested while attending a lone fighter course. In May 2017, T. was also arrested: He is said to have apologized to A. under a pretext when he had to attend an appointment as an alleged refugee, and he had a list of the names of well-known politicians. It was suspected that both had drawn up the list for attacks on potential victims. However, the investigation was soon closed. T. had previously deleted all contact details from his smartphone. According to the Defense Ministry, "three officers" may have had access to the ammunition and training grenades he was storing .

Since the beginning of 2017 at the latest, T., like his father, was a member of the AfD Saxony-Anhalt , which maintains close contacts with Björn Höcke , Markus Frohnmaier , the Institute for State Politics and the Identitarian Movement . T. is currently the head of the AfD regional committee “Foreign and Security Policy”. Following the neo-Nazis in the 1990s, his father is currently trying to build a German settlement in the Russian area around Kaliningrad , formerly East Prussia. He has been a member of the Reich Citizens' Movement since around 2005 . According to a recorded conversation with Jürgen Elsässer (May 2017) he was formerly a member of the party Die Republikaner and the NPD and sympathized with the military sports group Hoffmann . He wanted to save the white race; today that can only be done “if you destroy billions biologically and the entire Middle East atomically.” A distancing of the son from the attitude of his father is not known.

T. is said to have written Franco A.'s enemy list. The list included names of federal politicians and other prominent people who could be the target of assassination attempts.

During the investigation, the AfD member of the Bundestag Jan Nolte employed Maximilian T. as an employee. After the investigation was stopped, T. received a house ID from the Bundestag , which the Presidium of the Bundestag had previously refused for security reasons. At the end of November 2018, the Defense Committee of the German Bundestag , to which Nolte is a member, learned of the incident. At this meeting, the committee dealt for the first time with reports on right-wing extremist networks in the Bundeswehr, but received no information from the Federal Government. The fact that a committee member employs members of the Hannibal network, about which the committee is supposed to clarify, caused unease there.

Although they were aware of his right-wing extremist remuneration, the Bundeswehr and the MAD allowed Ts to work on a side-line basis in the Bundestag. With the house ID he can get in without security checks, so that he can get internal information from the Defense Committee about himself and other people around him. He also has access to the Jakob-Kaiser-Haus, where parliamentarians like Claudia Roth have their offices who were on Franco A's list of enemies. T. is currently working on the Altmark military training area in northern Saxony-Anhalt in the " Heer combat training center ", where soldiers practice methods of modern warfare. The BfV has classified him as a right-wing extremist since January 2019, with actual indications of efforts against the free democratic basic order . The chairman of the parliamentary control body of the secret services Armin Schuster (CDU) demanded in October 2019 that Maximilian T. be denied access to the Bundestag.

Mathias F.

The Stuttgart student Mathias F., a childhood friend of Franco A., had regularly exchanged messages with racist content with him. The investigators of the federal prosecutor's office found anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of alleged Jewish infiltration in his chat logs . He had claimed that terrorists were being sent to Germany in a targeted manner and expressed fear that the Germans would disappear after Adolf Hitler “fought so hard for our ethnic group”. Ammunition boxes, containers with ammunition belts, training hand grenades and weapon parts from the armed forces' stocks were also found with him. He admitted that at Franco A.'s request, he had brought them to his student residence in April 2017 and stowed them in his room. He was charged with violating the Arms Act and the War Weapons Control Act. In the trial before the regional court in Giessen from September 13, 2019, the first trial on the Hannibal complex, he reported: Franco A. had shown him firearms several times, told him about his bogus identity as a Syrian refugee and after his first arrest (February 2017) handed over two books, including Hitler's propaganda pamphlet “ Mein Kampf ”. When asked by the judge about his conspiracy theories, he stated that he deliberately provoked in chats in order to see reactions from others. He has not had any contact with Franco A. since his arrest. He appeared as a listener in the trial, but left it when Mathias F.'s defense attorney drew attention to him.

In September 2019, the Giessen Regional Court sentenced Mathias F. to one year probation and a fine of 2500 euros for violating the Weapons Act , the Explosives Act and the Act on the Control of War Weapons . Franco A. and two other officers had access to the stolen boxes kept by Mathias F.

Horst S.

During the investigation into Franco A., the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) also came across Horst S., a former air force officer . He had already been noticed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the MAD because he had ordered literature from a right-wing extremist publisher. His reserve company then forbade him to wear uniform and to take part in the G20 summit in Hamburg 2017 . In interviews, he stated that he did not know Franco A. personally and had only been in a chat group with him. However, he knows some people who were preparing for the collapse of the state order on "Day X". Such groups exist everywhere in Germany, some also in Austria and Switzerland. This included civil servants, police officers, soldiers, doctors, craftsmen and lawyers. They often kept in touch via encrypted chat services such as Telegram or WhatsApp and sometimes also met privately.

On July 13, 2017, Horst S. told state security officials that there were plans for a shadow army in the Bundeswehr. A group of his comrades, predominantly elite soldiers trained in the fight against terrorism and hostage liberation, for example from the KSK, are preparing with the general staff for “Day X”: an extreme state crisis and the collapse of public order. Possible triggers are attacks by refugees on children and women, rape, terrorist attacks, slums in German cities and an overwhelmed police force. In their “hatred of leftists” and refugees, they had created a “folder with addresses and photos” of target persons who had to “go”. This list and a full gun cabinet are hidden in a shed.

According to the interrogation protocol, Horst S. judged this group "North" as an "association of concerned citizens". Two of its members had taken a “more radical direction” and said that in the event of a state collapse, action should be taken against certain people “who benefit from the refugee policy”. He suspects that a member collected the information about these people on his own and knows nothing about other people involved. At a meeting of four members of the group, in which he took part, the owner of the weapon stash said that in the event of a crisis "the people should be collected and taken to a place where they should then be killed". But these were only “thoughts”, not “concrete ideas”.

The group's chat logs evaluated by BKA investigators, weapons and ammunition depots found in raids, and lists of enemies later confirmed the suspected intentions. Accordingly, a group of active and former elite fighters planned acts of violence, obtained weapons, collected data on politicians and "left activists" and trained together for that "day X". However, the Federal Ministry of Defense did not inform the Bundestag and its specialist committees because of the ongoing investigations.

Nordkreuz raids

On August 28, 2017, the Attorney General had the houses of six people from Prepp in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania searched. Two of them, the lawyer Jan Hendrik H. and the chief detective Haik J., are accused of "serious acts of violence that endanger the state": They are said to have planned to arrest and kill politicians and left-wing activists on "day X". They belonged to a group of around 30 people who were preparing for disasters and an "invasion" of refugees and who were also hoarding fuel, weapons and ammunition. The members, including several Bundeswehr reservists and SEK officials, exchanged ideas about their plans in chat groups with names such as “Nordkreuz”, “Nord.Com” or “Nord” and met for target practice. Four of them spoke at the beginning of 2017 about the internment and shooting of political opponents on "Day X" and are also said to have spoken of a "final solution" . Horst S. made shooting training possible for the members and kept in touch with Franco A's surroundings.

According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, during this raid the investigators did not yet find the suspected list of killings that Horst S. and other witnesses claimed to have seen in the shed next to the house.

Peter W.

The former KSK fighter Peter W. was Lieutenant Colonel of the Military Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD) and his contact person for the Attorney General and the BKA. On September 13, 2017, he asked the KSK sergeant, André S., who was listed as an "information person", in Sindelfingen about right-wing extremist tendencies in his company.

On September 15, 2017, BKA officials searched KSK barracks in Calw , but found nothing. The investigators then suspected that Peter W. had informed his contact man about this upcoming raid and that he had warned his former comrades. On October 2, 2017, the defense disciplinary attorney questioned Peter W. about this and accused him of betrayal . The public prosecutor's office in Cologne brought charges against him for breach of official secrecy. In 2018, the trial against him began at the Cologne District Court . However, he was acquitted in March 2019.

André S. ("Hannibal")

Through the contacts of Franco A. and cell phone evaluations, BKA investigators discovered some of the chat groups witnessed by Horst S. Among other things, they exchanged xenophobic and right-wing extremist content and repeatedly mentioned the user "Hannibal". He had probably given himself this code name after the leading figure from the US television series " The A-Team " from the 1980s. He was the administrator of several chat groups, including that of Franco A., and was identified as an active KSK soldier in 2017. During interrogation, he denied personal contacts with Franco A. and a right-wing extremist stance. BKA and MAD classified him only as a witness.

André S. was born in 1985 in Halle (Saale) , was a sergeant major for eight years as a KSK member, most recently as a trainer in the Graf Zeppelin barracks in Calw, where he was responsible for military security. Due to disciplinary disputes, he later left the KSK and became the full-time director of the Uniter Association. For a long time he had met regularly with MAD employees and was supposed to give them information about right-wing extremist tendencies in his company. According to the BKA, in 2017 he was "the only credible provider of information on internal processes of the KSK" who knew about all processes and agreements. He already knew about the raids on August 28, 2017 in northern Germany, but on September 13 he probably also learned the reason for it and the accusation of the Federal Prosecutor General against Franco A. and Nordkreuz-Prepper that they planned to kill left-wing political opponents.

When Andre S. found out about the charges against Franco A., he immediately gave instructions to delete all chats he had administered. The reason he gave was that he wanted to protect the judges, officials and soldiers in the chat groups from being associated with Franco A. His chat network was divided into regions in north, south, west and east. He had provided these groups with confidential information and situation reports from the Bundeswehr in order to give them the impression of a knowledge advantage. He knew Franco A. from meetings of the chat group south, to which both belonged, and from joint KSK courses.

The Federal Public Prosecutor started investigations into the "preparation of a serious act of violence that endangers the state" against André S. In 2017, the BKA investigators found two handfuls of cartridges, smoke and signal grenades and a box with detonators for hand grenades in his house and his parents' house. In September 2019, the Böblingen District Court imposed a fine of 120 daily rates on him for violating the Weapons Act and the Explosives Act. He appealed against this. In the event of a subsequent conviction of at least 60 daily rates, he would lose his gun license and his gun license and would not be allowed to register a security trade. He was transferred from the KSK, but not released from the Bundeswehr. The taz welcomed the criminal proceedings as a warning to soldiers against ammunition theft, but criticized that investigations were only carried out against individual perpetrators and not for the Hannibal network as a whole. Because the Nordkreuz group was connected to Andre S.'s chat groups, the two cases could not be separated.

In September 2019, André S. stated that his military service as a temporary soldier would expire at the end of the month. He thus escaped disciplinary proceedings. The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court had not found sufficient suspicion of terrorism against him, but the Federal Prosecutor's office continued to accuse him of planning right-wing extremist attacks and examined a trial for it.

Uniter e. V.

According to statements from association members, around 200 former and active Bundeswehr soldiers formed a conspiratorial network in the Uniter association . This is also said to have prepared for the targeted killing of political opponents on "Day X" and to have set up secret storage facilities for weapons, ammunition, fuel and food on the German border with Austria and Switzerland in order to be independent of other resources. In addition, they agreed on places of refuge for their families, safe houses equipped with security technology .

Special units of the Bundeswehr and the police meet in the association . The founders are André S. and an employee at the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Baden-Württemberg , who is said to have also sat on the association's board until he resigned. The association has existed since 2007 and should have between several hundred and 1,800 members. The association primarily looks after veterans who have returned from missions abroad. However, many “Uniter” question the state order that they are supposed to defend professionally and, following a right-wing extremist ideology, prepare for a situation in which the constitutional consensus should no longer exist.

Additional training courses offered by the association could also serve this purpose. KSK Hauptfeldwebel André S. alias "Hannibal" offered target practice with his own weapons from flying helicopters in Poland and the Czech Republic. In the “Rescue and Help Training Center” in Morsbach, long marches with heavy luggage, strength and endurance exercises are practiced on weekends (known as “recruitment procedures”).

Other network members

A striking number of Bundeswehr soldiers who are part of the Hannibal network are parachutists. In security circles, the training center was altenstadt air base called, where in the 1990s " leader Birthdays " celebrated and the Horst Wessel Song of the NSDAP to have been sung. The then commander Fritz Zwicknagl was deposed and now works for the AfD in the Bundestag. The trainer there was also Andreas Kalbitz (AfD federal board).

A doctor from Essen, whose sons are active in the New Right, is said to belong to the Westkreuz. One of them is said to be in a relationship with a daughter of Götz Kubitschek .

Weapons procurement

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Chat logs available to the magazine Focus show that Uniter members obtain firearms for training outside of the KSK service. A Uniter proudly reported in a chat about the acquisition of a Brno 500 over and under rifle with ammunition and a .22 caliber pistol . The KSK soldiers may also have prohibited weapons of war . Then the pixelated Photography indicates a semi-automatic AR-15 - assault rifle back to the homepage of Uniter. A university student named “Matze” reported to his chat group that they now had enough weapons and ammunition in a secret depot near Nuremberg “to be able to survive”.

Chat groups and chat logs

In the chat groups coordinated by "Hannibal", the members, including many police officers, former or active Bundeswehr soldiers, exchanged encrypted information that a crisis in Germany offers an opportunity for an armed overthrow that needs to be prepared. Then you could take power, take left politicians and activists prisoner or kill.

According to chat logs with Andre S., member of the North Cross, Jan Hendrik H. in Rostock, was indignant about a memorial for the victims of the Nazi underground (NSU). According to witness statements, he is said to have organized a shooting competition once a year and named the winner's cup after the name of an NSU victim. According to investigators, more radical chat members were convinced that if the Russian army marched in an emergency, there would only be a guerrilla fight like previous stay-behind organizations .

In the Telegram messenger service , in addition to a north group, there were groups east, west and south - organized along the geographical breakdown of the military area administration - as well as groups for Austria and Switzerland. André S. acted as administrator for several of the groups. According to information from the federal government on a small request from Left MP Martina Renner from February 2020, the chat group "Nord" had up to 73 members at times, the subgroup "Nordkreuz" included 41 "preppers" in another subgroup "Nord.Com" were 38 People and finally there was a group of four called "Connect Four". There are said to have been 59 members in the "South" group. The Federal Government has no knowledge of the groups "West" and "East".

It is known through the Nordkreuz network that many of the members have access to weapons and are skilled shooters. Three SEK officials are said to have illegally stolen around 10,000 rounds of ammunition from LKA stocks and a submachine gun since April 2012. According to the results of investigations to date, the “preppers” have gathered around 25,000 names and addresses from their surroundings and nationwide with the help of police computers, preferably from people who have shown themselves to be “refugee friends”. Investigators accuse Jan Hendrik H. and Haik J. of creating the lists in order to kill the target persons on day X.

Safe houses

The exposure of Franco A. put the network under pressure. As in northern Germany, the members of the southern group have now determined safe meeting points and accommodations (so-called safe houses ) where they could meet on "Day X". Weapons and ammunition are also said to have been deposited there.

At the beginning of April 2020, the BfV and the Federal Ministry of the Interior warned the Interior Committee of the Bundestag about the activities of right-wing extremists and the increased risk of attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic . According to information from the RND , members of prepper groups in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia took weapons and ammunition from their hiding places in those safehouses.

reception

The Germany radio culture complained in November 2018 that research taz no public outcry was raised and disappear the subject. The journalist Michael Kraske said: “When Bundeswehr soldiers talk about the fact that you want to provide X warehouses for one day and use them to intern and even liquidate political opponents and enemies, then that is actually a reason for an outcry. And the fact that this outcry does not occur in the media is not a good sign. "

After further clues to the killing plans of the prepper coordinated by "Hannibal" became known, opposition politicians demanded full clarification, especially as to whether, given the large number of people on the "death lists" of right-wing extremists, more victims of right-wing violence had long since been committed complaints about which the public is not yet aware. “I actually expect answers from an interior minister, who is also a member of the state parliament, on how to deal with such lists,” says Eva-Maria Kröger from the Left Party. “We asked several times who was on it, but got no information. I find that extremely problematic. ”“ The plans that are now being revealed are massively worrying in terms of extent and concretization, ”said Green interior expert Konstantin von Notz to the RND . "Our state has a duty to analyze the network structures that are emerging here and which have so far been confusing, to enlighten them and to combat them with all state means," said the Green politician. The creation of death or enemy lists by right-wing extremist to right-wing terrorist groups is common in the violent right-wing scene.

In December 2018, some military experts and Bundeswehr spokespersons doubted that the previous results of the investigation into the environment of Franco A., Nordkreuz and Uniter eV already showed that there was an armed nationwide "shadow army" with plans to overthrow.

Additional information

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christina Schmidt: Right-wing terror in Germany: On the enemy list. taz, July 6, 2019
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i case Franco A .: BKA has evidence of a network within the Bundeswehr. Focus, November 9, 2018
  3. ↑ SZ November 19, 2019: [1]
  4. ↑ Martina Renner & Sebastian Wehrhahn: Shadow Army or Individual Cases? - Rights structures in the security authorities | CILIP Institute and Journal. CILIP - Bürgerrechte und Polizei, accessed on April 17, 2020 (German).
  5. ^ A b c Sebastian Erb, Christina Schmidt: taz research on right network: Risk in the Reichstag. taz, October 26, 2019
  6. ↑ a b Konrad Litschko: Enemy lists from the right network: “Enormously high risk”. taz, November 30, 2018
  7. ^ A b Christina Schmidt, Sebastian Erb: Right network in security authorities: A buddy like everyone else. taz, September 13, 2019
  8. ^ Konrad Litschko, Martin Kaul, Christina Schmidt: Right-wing extremists in the Bundeswehr: Opposition wants more education. taz, November 28, 2018
  9. ↑ Christina Schmidt: Stolen Bundeswehr ammunition: First judgment in the Franco A. taz complex , September 16, 2019
  10. ↑ a b Florian Flade: Franco A., the prepper and a soldier named "Hannibal". Welt online, April 20, 2018
  11. ↑ Extremism - Schwerin: Kipping demands information on the "Nordkreuz" list. Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 7, 2019, accessed on August 21, 2020 .
  12. ^ A b c d e Martin Kaul: Right network in the Bundeswehr: Hannibal's shadow army. taz, November 16, 2018, ISSN 0931-9085
  13. ^ Gerwald Herter: Military Intelligence Service MAD - KSK soldiers were warned about a search. Deutschlandfunk, November 15, 2018
  14. ^ Franco A case: MAD first lieutenant acquitted in the process of betrayal of secrets. Time online, March 27, 2019
  15. ↑ a b A right-wing underground network is apparently planning the overthrow in Germany. Vice.com, November 19, 2018
  16. ↑ Sebastian Erb, Christina Schmidt: "Hannibal" has to go to court. taz, September 23, 2019
  17. ↑ Daniel Schulz: Investigations in the "Hannibal" case: Individual perpetrators everywhere. taz, September 23, 2019
  18. ^ Founder of a right-wing network: "Hannibal" leaves the Bundeswehr. taz, September 25, 2019
  19. ↑ Uniter eV: The protection of the constitution founded a controversial association. Zeit Online, March 11, 2019
  20. ↑ a b Luca Heyer: The Hannibal Complex , June 13, 2019, PDF
  21. ↑ a b Tim Wiese: Media criticism - where is the response to the “Hannibal” research? Deutschlandfunk Kultur, November 24, 2018
  22. ↑ Jörg Köpke: The right-wing radical “cross” connection and the Bundeswehr. Editorial network Germany, September 10, 2019
  23. ↑ Doris Hellpoldt: Right network in the Bundeswehr - preparing for “Day X”. detektor.fm, November 19, 2018
  24. ↑ Martina renner, Member of the Bundestag: Small question "Right- wing networks in the police and the Bundeswehr - Findings on Franco A., Nordkreuz & Uniter e.V." Bundestag printed paper 19/17340. February 21, 2020, accessed April 20, 2020 .
  25. ↑ a b c d "Death lists", body bags, caustic lime: Nazi group prepared further attacks. Ostsee-Zeitung, June 28, 2019
  26. ↑ a b Those affected will be informed. , taz, June 17, 2019
  27. ↑ Jörg Köpke: Corona crisis: Federal government warns of right-wing terrorist attacks. RND, April 3, 2020
  28. ↑ Is there a right-wing extremist "shadow army" in Germany? dpa / inFranken.de , December 6, 2018