Almost 150,000 people read along on the messenger service Telegram when Oliver Janich calls for the killing of German police officers. “Of course it is perfectly clear that anyone who drags you to compulsory vaccination should shoot down a police officer. And no, that’s not a call to violence, it’s self-defence. I would do it,” Janich wrote publicly on the platform in November 2021.
Not the first killing fantasy that the German living in the Philippines has publicly presented to his thousands of followers. In the past, among other things, he has called for American President Joe Biden and Hungarian patron George Soros to be “hanged”.
Hate and hatred against political opponents, scientists and journalists is a daily reality for one of the most influential conspiracy ideologues in the German-speaking world. This could now be his undoing.
On Wednesday morning, the news of his arrest in the Philippines also spread to supporters of Janich via Telegram. The 53-year-old has been living there for several years and is trying to promote a drop-out project for like-minded people in a beach resort on the island of Tablas and to sell residential units to German emigrants.
According to this, around 50 heavily armed Filipino police officers are said to have entered the “Tablas Seaview Resort” in the morning and arrested Janich. After all, the conspiracy ideologue was brought to the Philippine capital Manila by the emergency services, according to an insider on the right-wing populist network “Gettr”.
It is currently not possible to verify whether the arrest actually took place in this way. However, other sources confirmed Janich’s arrest to the Tagesspiegel. German authorities initially did not want to comment on the case.
According to information from the Tagesspiegel, Janich has been the focus of German intelligence since the beginning of the year, and the Munich public prosecutor’s office is running two parallel investigations against the 53-year-old.
A spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office confirmed that the suspect was being investigated on suspicion of insult and public incitement to commit crimes.
“There is a suspicion that the accused in 2020 and 2021 – in each case publicly via Telegram – (…) called for the execution of a prominent person and the killing of former government members of the federal and state governments in the Federal Republic of Germany.” , the authority said.
It is initially unclear to what extent the arrest in the Philippines took place under pressure from German authorities, since according to Tagesspiegel information, Janich is also being investigated in the Philippines for tax evasion, among other things.
In particular, a former acquaintance of Janich, who has since broken with him, is said to have pushed the investigations both in the Philippines and in Germany. In addition, Janich is said to have owned a weapon illegally, which would explain the presence of heavily armed police officers when the right-wing populist was arrested.
It is not yet clear whether the Philippines will extradite Oliver Janich to Germany despite the lack of an agreement. Both the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Munich public prosecutor initially did not want to comment on the Tagesspiegel for “investigative tactical reasons”.
