Germany arrests 19-year-old accused of running online groups that groomed teens into self-harm and incited a fatal stabbing at a Russian school

Germany’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office said it had detained a teenager identified as Kai M, who is suspected of belonging to two “right-wing extremist” criminal organizations.

Kai M. has been in custody since March 17, 2026. According to German-language news outlets, he is 19 and lives near Trier.

According to the prosecutor’s office, Kai M. joined one of the groups no later than March 2024 and founded the other. Members of both groups scoured social media and gaming platforms for young people — mostly girls — to manipulate and coerce them into degrading acts or self-harm, up to and including suicide.

Kai M. and other members of one of the groups also incited a teenager in Russia to fatally stab a child at school, prosecutors said. The office did not say which case it was referring to.

Kai M. also allegedly called for the murder of a U.S. citizen and “exerted influence” on teenagers in the United States and Sweden to get them to set vehicles on fire, prosecutors said. He is also suspected of coercing a child from another European country into “performing sexual acts on himself using a knife, which resulted in severe injuries.”

In December 2025, a student was killed in one of the most recent attacks at a Russian school. A 15-year-old ninth-grader, Timofey K., brought a knife to a school in the town of Gorki-2, outside Moscow, and attacked a group of students. Kobiljon Aliev, a 10-year-old fourth-grader, was killed.