Status: 08/17/2022 7:03 p.m
He is considered to have a wide reach and is said to have called on Telegram to kill members of the government: the German conspiracy ideologist Oliver Janich. According to media information, he has now been arrested in the Philippines.
The German conspiracy ideologist Oliver Janich is said to have been arrested in the Philippines. According to information from the dpa news agency, he was arrested early in the morning (German time) and is to be taken to Germany.
Spiegel Online reported about it first. According to information from the magazine, the Philippine authorities are investigating suspected crimes against Janich.
There was also talk of an “arrest” on Janich’s Telegram channel, one of the most far-reaching German-language distribution channels for conspiracy stories.
Murder calls via Telegram
The Munich public prosecutor confirmed that criminal proceedings were ongoing against Janich. He is said to have insulted people via Telegram, called for executions and demanded the killing of German government members, according to court spokeswoman Juliane Grotz. It is being investigated for insult and public incitement to commit crimes. “We are currently unable to provide any further information for reasons of investigation tactics,” explained the prosecutor.
According to Spiegel information, the German arrest warrant against Janich has been available since April 22nd. According to the magazine, Janich spoke on his Telegram channel with around 150,000 followers at the end of 2021 that it was necessary “to shoot all members of the government at federal and state level”.
Janich had also disseminated a large-scale survey intended to underpin criticism of the corona measures in Germany. However, the methods used were largely unsuitable and the results therefore more than doubtful, as the ARD fact finder reported.
Followers of the QAnon theory
The Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which has been observing Janich from Munich for some time, described him last year as “the best-known representative of the QAnon conspiracy theory in German-speaking countries”. With the help of his wide reach, Janich “spreads right-wing extremist content and fuels a general distrust among his followers of the social, economic and political system in Germany,” the authority told the magazine.
According to Spiegel, Janich set up a kind of dropout project with like-minded people on the Philippine island of Tablas. According to the dpa news agency, he had been living in the Philippines for a long time. In Germany he was last resident in Bavaria. A spokesman for the Federal Criminal Police Office did not want to comment on the case. He pointed out “that we generally do not provide any information on personal data”.