ExtremismGerman police raid suspected KKK members' homes

German police on Wednesday conducted raids on several properties throughout Germany connected to an extremist group which associates itself with the American Ku Klux Klan. A total of seventeen people are at the center of the investigation.

DW reports that the German police raided twelve apartments in eight different German states belonging to suspected members of an extreme-right group calling itself the National Socialist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Deutschland.

More than 200 police officers searched properties in Baden-Württemberg, Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland Palatinate, Saxony Anhalt, and Thuringia. The police seized more than 100 weapons, including air guns, swords, machetes, and knives.

The raids targeted seventeen people between the ages of 17 and 59, but the authorities refused to say whether anyone has been arrested. Germany’s domestic intellig agency said around forty people are either under surveillance or investigation for connections with the extreme-right group.

“The members were united in their right-wing orientation, which included expressing a glorification of National Socialism,” investigators said.

Investigators began monitoring the suspects after they showed up in a chat history on a mobile phone. The phone had been seized by the police during an earlier investigation into the use of insignia and symbols of illegal organizations.

It is illegal in Germany publicly to display certain Nazi-era symbols and insignia. 

Authorities said they have found no evidence linking the extremist group with other KKK organizations. Investigators say the group recruited members partly online, and charged monthly membership fees.

The KKK is well known in the United States as a hate group. However, there is now published research about activities by similarly named groups in Germany.