German law enforcement has launched a major coordinated operation against a violent Marxist-Leninist militant group on the morning of November 3, arresting five suspects and raiding roughly 20 properties across four federal states.
The raids, led by the specialist left-wing extremism unit Soko LinX of the Saxony State Criminal Police Office (LKA) and the Dresden public prosecutor’s office, targeted members of the self-styled communist organisation Kollektiv Zwickau.
According to judicial authorities, the investigation centres on 12 suspects aged between 18 and 36 accused of forming a criminal organisation, dangerous bodily harm, robbery and severe breach of the public peace.
Officers conducted searches across Saxony, Thuringia, Hamburg and Bremen, raiding residences in Zwickau, Leipzig, Dresden, Saalfeld, Hamburg and Bremen.
Four male suspects, aged 22, 22, 33 and 36, were arrested on the strength of existing arrest warrants issued by the Dresden district court.
A fifth suspect, aged 20, was taken into custody after allegedly physically assaulting a police officer during the search of an apartment.
All five were due to appear before an examining judge in Dresden later that day.
Prosecutors said Kollektiv Zwickau was established in Zwickau, southwest Saxony, in 2022 as an orthodox communist group dedicated to systematically targeting and violently assaulting political opponents, right-wing activists and individuals deemed ideologically hostile in the region and beyond.
Investigators allege the cell carried out coordinated vigilante street attacks involving batons, pepper spray and physical violence.
Domestic intelligence officials at Saxony’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) have monitored the network for several years, warning that the group’s ideological objective extends beyond street-level antifa vigilantism to replacing Germany’s parliamentary democracy with a communist system led by a revolutionary party.
The LfV classifies the group, which has about 15 members and has been active online since at least 2020, as dogmatic left-wing extremist.
The organisation has also publicly aligned itself with militant groups such as the “Hammer Gang”, also known as Antifa Ost, which the US State Department designated a terrorist organisation in November 2025.
It has campaigned under the banner “Free Maja” for Maja T., a non-binary German militant sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in Hungary over street beatings in Budapest in February 2023.
A Budapest court originally imposed an eight-year sentence, which was reduced on appeal on September 30.
The November 3 coordinated swoop underlines growing concern among German security services regarding increasingly professionalised and militant underground left-wing networks operating across state borders.
Saxony’s LfV recorded 135 left-wing extremist violent crimes in 2025, up from 92 the year before, and named Kollektiv Zwickau among the violence-oriented groups behind the growth of dogmatic structures in the state.
Authorities confirmed that searches and the forensic examination of seized electronic devices were ongoing.
Belgium’s interior minister has said the student riots in Liège, eastern Belgium, are no longer a spontaneous school protest, and that an Antifa-type movement is manipulating children. https://t.co/8zWsCv8qNE
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) October 8, 2026
