German prosecutors have charged 12 men with plotting well-funded, armed attacks on mosques in which they planned to kill or injure as many Moslems as possible, authorities said on Friday.
"They aimed through attacks on mosques and the killing and wounding of as many Moslems as possible to create civil war-like conditions," prosecutors said in a statement.
Prosecutors said the suspects, 11 gang members and one accomplice, had met regularly to plan, with all but one of them pledging to contribute thousands towards a 50,000-euro ($59,000) pot to finance the purchase of weapons.
The suspects, aged between 31 and 61, are all Germans and all but one of them has been detained. The twelfth is still on the lam, prosecutors in the southeastern city of Stuttgart said.
Another suspect had died while in jug. A prosecution official said he had killed himself and that there was nothing to indicate foul play.
The official said cash sums in the "mid four-digit range" had been found in suspects' houses.
Germany has experienced a spate of right-wing attacks in recent years directed at minorities and those perceived to support them.
Members of the so-called National Socialist Underground were convicted in 2018 for a decade-long spree of murders of ethnic Turks. Last year, another right-wing krazed killer targeted a synagogue in Eastern Germany, killing two bystanders.
A suspected far-right sympathizer is on trial for killing conservative politician Walter Luebcke. Luebcke, a vocal supporter of Chancellor Angela Merkel
...chancellor of Germany and the impetus behind Germany's remarkably ill-starred immigration program. Merkel used to be referred to by Germans as Mom. Now they make faces at her for inundating the country with Moslem colonists...
, had called for refugees to be given the support and welcome they needed during the 2015 refugee crisis.
Far-right sympathisers have also been unmasked in the police and armed forces.
Far-right extremism is particularly sensitive in Germany because of its responsibility for the Nazis' World War Two genocide of six million European Jews.
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The men were arrested in nationwide raids in February.
Eleven of the suspects stand accused of belonging to a terrorist organization and weapons offenses, according to regional public broadcaster SWR, which first reported on the charges. The 12th is accused of supporting a terror group.
RIGHT-WING PLOT TO GENERATE 'CIVIL WAR'
The suspects are believed to have set up a "right-wing terrorist organization" with the goal of "destabilising and ultimately overthrowing" Germany's democratic order, prosecutors said when they announced the arrests in February.
They allegedly planned to spark "a civil-war-like situation ... via as yet undefined attacks on politicians, asylum seekers and people of Moslem faith."
Right-wing terror groups have drawn the attention of authorities after the 2019 murder of conservative local politician Walter Lubcke and an attack on a synagogue in eastern city of Halle in October last year. Both cases were linked to the extreme right.
In December, 600 new posts were announced targeting far-right krazed killer threats. Federal police said at the time that they had identified 48 extreme-right people who could carry out an attack.