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Day X

Day X, Part 1: Shadow Army?

Day X

The New York Times

News, Society & Culture

4.61.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2021

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The mysterious story of a German soldier, a faked Syrian identity and a loaded gun in an airport bathroom cracks the door open to a network of far-right extremists inside the German military and the police. They are preparing for the day democracy collapses — a day they call Day X. But just how dangerous are they? See all episodes of Day X at nytimes.com/dayx

Transcript

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0:00.0

Okay, let's go down here.

0:07.0

This is where it happened.

0:10.0

Should we go inside?

0:20.0

Yeah.

0:24.0

One day, in January 2017, a maintenance guy was doing his daily round.

0:29.0

At the Vienna Airport.

0:33.0

He walks into a single person bathroom.

0:40.0

And opens a small door on the back wall to access some pipes.

0:45.0

And inside, there's an old black pistol.

0:52.0

And it's loaded.

0:58.0

So he takes the gun to the police and the police set a trap to see who comes to get it.

1:05.0

About two weeks later, someone does.

1:12.0

The man they arrest identifies himself as an officer in the German military.

1:20.0

And after hours of questioning, they let him go.

1:25.0

When they run his fingerprints for a routine check, they come up with a match.

1:31.0

But these fingerprints are not registered to a military officer.

1:36.0

They're registered to a Syrian refugee.

1:43.0

This sets off alarm bells and an investigation that eventually spans three countries

1:49.0

and multiple intelligence agencies.

1:52.0

And what they find is that in 2015, as hundreds of thousands of refugees were arriving in Germany,

2:00.0

this German military officer disguised himself and managed to fool the authorities into believing

2:07.0

he was one of those refugees.

...

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