Germany detains two ex-soldiers accused of forming pro-Saudi mercenary group

Germany’s police have detained two former soldiers on terrorism-related charges for allegedly trying to form a pro-Saudi mercenary group of up to 150 members to fight in the war on Yemen.

German prosecutors said in a statement that Arend-Adolf G and Achim A were detained on Wednesday in southern Germany. Both are German citizens and former soldiers in the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces. Police searched the suspects’ apartments in Munich and the district of Calw, near the city of Stuttgart, and other premises.

According to the statement, the men’s primary motivation was to earn about €40,000 each per month by offering the group’s services to third parties, specifically Saudi Arabia. The men are accused of being the ringleaders in the formation of a terror organization. Together they are alleged to have decided in early 2021 to create their own mercenary group made up of between 100 and 150 former soldiers or members of the police.

Achim A “tried persistently and over a long period of time to initiate a dialogue with Saudi government officials” in order to get the project financed, the prosecutors said. “He tried in various ways to establish a channel of communication with Saudi government agencies and to obtain a meeting date for the submission of their bid.” 

The men were aware that their plan for military intervention in Yemen would inevitably require them to kill people, and they were aware that civilians might be injured and killed too, the prosecutors said.

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The German military has been plagued by a series of incidents in the past years that have raised questions about the extent of extremist elements within the army. The most prominent case prompted the disbanding of an entire company of the elite special forces unit – the KSK – in 2020 after police seized weapons and ammunition during a raid on the property of a KSK soldier in the eastern state of Saxony. 

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Saudi Arabia and its allies launched the devastating war on Yemen in 2015 to reinstall the former regime and crush the Ansarullah resistance movement.

The war, accompanied by a tight siege, has failed to reach its goals, but it has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people and put millions more at risk of starvation by destroying much of the country’s infrastructure. According to the UN, Yemen is experiencing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Last month, Yemen’s Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf Abdullah slammed the US and Britain for openly supporting Saudi Arabia in its war while urging the Sana’a government defending the country to stop fighting, saying such a dual approach is meant to keep up arms sales to the Riyadh regime.

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In Sept. 2014, the people of Yemen led a popular uprising against the Saudi-backed unpopular regime of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi following weeks of anti-government protests.

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