The carpenter apprentice Marvin E. from Spangenberg in northern Hesse, who is suspected of being a terrorist, has to answer before the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court from August.

The 5th Criminal Senate approved the charges brought by the Federal Public Prosecutor and opened the main proceedings, the court announced on Wednesday.

E., who was 19 at the time of the crime and was a candidate on a CDU list in the 2021 local elections, was arrested in September and has been in custody since then.

With the opening order, the court ordered continued detention.

It must also decide whether juvenile criminal law applies because E. was an adolescent at the time of the crime.

Anna Sophia Lang

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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In March, the Federal Public Prosecutor brought charges against the now 20-year-old E. for attempting to found a terrorist organization and preparing for a serious act of violence that endangered the state.

The Karlsruhe authorities also accuses Marvin E. of violating the Weapons and Explosives Act.

According to the federal prosecutors, E. is a supporter of the US-based "Atomic Weapons Division" (AWD), which is striving for a "racial and civil war" in order to prevent the displacement of the "white population".

All Jews, Muslims and other non-conformists living in the western world should be killed.

The aim of the AWD is to destabilize the basic democratic order with attacks and murders on politicians in order to achieve a right-wing extremist form of rule.

E. Researched attack targets

In the summer of 2021, Marvin E. made the decision to start such a war within three years.

To this end, he wanted to set up an AWD Hessen with himself at the top, which was supposed to carry out attacks in Hessen with explosive devices and firearms.

He was looking for members who were familiar with weapons and pyrotechnics.

At the same time, he tried to procure the necessary arsenal of weapons, found out about a rapid-fire rifle and bought components for building explosive devices online.

So he made a mixture with an explosive power that roughly corresponds to that of military explosives.

E. has also already researched attack targets and planned a poster campaign.

However, before that, on September 16, he was arrested.

The allegations against E. only became known in November, two months after his arrest, about which the public was not informed.

At that time it also turned out that the young man had stood for the city council and a local advisory board in the local elections in March 2021 on a list from the Spangenberg CDU city association.

The local CDU wrote on its website that it was "shocked and appalled by the attempt to infiltrate an apparently right-wing extremist young fellow citizen of our city".

One thanks the security forces "that this could be discovered in time and fixed".

According to the chairman Jörg Lange, Marvin E. had himself put on the list as a non-party candidate and thus a free candidate.

"His intentions were and are not known to us."

The protection of the constitution was not noticed

In November, the Hessian Ministry of the Interior informed the FAZ that Marvin E. was not known to either the police or the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

In coordination with the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office, which was still responsible at the time, the representatives of the state parliament's internal affairs committee were informed of the arrest of the terrorist suspect for the first time on September 20, four days later.

The “BAO Hessen R”, the special organizational structure for Hesse law of the State Criminal Police Office, had determined.

Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) said in November in the Interior Committee that after a tip from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution to the Hessian intelligence officers, the suspect was searched and arrested very quickly.

Master of the procedure is the public prosecutor's office, which also decides

what he was allowed to pass on to the representatives of the interior committee.

This was done so cautiously so that the investigation would not be endangered, also because of possible accomplices or accomplices.