German prosecutors arrested a German-Polish man accused of using the darknet to call for assassinations of top politicians and raise bounties online.
More than 20 people were on the list of prospective targets, including former chancellors Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz as well as judges and ex-government ministers, local media claimed.
On his platform Assassination Politics, the 49-year-old suspect, named only as Martin S, is believed to have released personal data of notable persons as well as “charge sheets” and “death sentences”.
The suspect, who was seized late on Monday in the western city of Dortmund, where he lives with his family, faces allegations of financing terrorism, inciting people to conduct a major act of violence that endangers the state and committing the harmful publication of personal data.
“Since at least June 2025, Martin S has called for attacks on named politicians, public officials and public figures in Germany on the darknet,”
the federal prosecutor’s office said in a
statement.
“To this end, he anonymously operates a platform on which he publishes, among other things, lists of names, death sentences pronounced by himself and instructions for building explosive devices. He also solicits donations in cryptocurrency, which are then offered as ‘bounties’ for the killing of the targeted individuals.”
The Assassination Politics platform purportedly also includes information defined as rightwing extremist, racist and promoting conspiracy theories.
It was not immediately obvious whether any funds were received via Martin S’s platform but the matter was regarded as serious enough that the federal prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorist cases and other major risks to state security, took over.
The suspect, who apparently works as a software developer, is believed to have acted alone.
The interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said the inquiry began in June on a tip from the domestic intelligence service.
Local media reported many of the intended targets had been selected because of their role in public initiatives to restrict the spread of Covid during the pandemic.
The Berlin daily Die Tageszeitung reported Martin S had came to the attention of authorities for acts during rallies conducted by an extreme fringe of the anti-Covid restrictions movement and had joined in events hosted by the rightwing extremist party Die Heimat (The Homeland).
Der Spiegel stated that Martin S had taken part in a memorial march in 2021 for the Dortmund neo-Nazi leader Siegfried Borchardt, known as SS-Siggi, and had warned on social media that Europe was on its path to becoming an Islamist caliphate.
Martin S may have received inspiration for his platform’s name in an essay called “Assassination Politics” from the mid-1990s by a US crypto-anarchist known as Jim Bell.
In it, Bell proposed for the hypothetical development of a website ordering the murder of reportedly corrupt politicians and state servants by recruits discovered online, who would be paid by anonymous sponsors.
German intelligence and security agencies have in recent years worked to stamp out a far-right conspiracy theorist movement known as the Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich).
Police in statewide raids in 2022 disrupted what investigators said was an alleged plot to topple the state, attack parliament and assassinate political figures, led by a pseudo-aristocratic businessman.
The movement, which challenges the validity of the current German republic, was long dismissed as a bunch of malcontents and oddballs, but is now considered a serious security concern by authorities.
What charges does German law apply for darknet assassination plots?
German law applies several serious charges for darknet assassination plots like those linked to Martin S., the suspect arrested for running a darknet assassination platform. Instructing serious acts of violence against the state( incitement or supplication to commit violent crimes).
Dangerous dispersion of particular data that endangers the state( participating sensitive private information in a dangerous way). New possible charges include easing violence, terror- related offenses, and venturing public security.
The suspect also allegedly published lemon- making instructions and called for targeted killings, which further composites the legal inflexibility under German felonious law vittles related to terrorism, violent crimes, and data protection laws. German prosecutors treat darknet platforms used for assassination plots under strictanti-terrorism and felonious bills to help and make organized violent pitfalls.