Prosecutors believe the three suspects wanted to implicate asylum seekers in their planned attack, in a case that has shocked Germans and stirred a debate about the depth of rightwing radicalism in the country’s military. The prosecutor’s office named the third suspect in the case as Maximilian T, a 27-year-old German national. The first soldier and the student, identified respectively as Franco A and Mathias F, were detained on 26 April. Chancellor Angela Merkel defended fellow conservative defence minister Ursula von der Leyen’s handling of the case on Tuesday against critics who said the minister had wrongly implied that most soldiers were rightwing radicals. “If she has knowledge that rightwing extremism is a mass phenomenon in the military, then she needs to present it publicly,” he said.

Source: The Guardian May 09, 2017 21:29 UTC