Status: 07/07/2021 12:08 p.m.
Two Islamists from Osnabrück and Kassel are said to have known about the planned attack in Vienna. The Attorney General had their apartments searched again.
It was shortly before 8 p.m. on November 2, 2020, the evening before the lockdown, when Kujtim F. opened fire in downtown Vienna. The 20-year-old Islamist used an assault rifle and a pistol to shoot people who were in the popular nightlife district of the Austrian capital, the so-called “Bermuda Triangle”. Four people were killed and more than twenty injured, some seriously. A special task force of the Austrian police finally shot the assassin, a supporter of the terrorist militia “Islamic State” (IS).
Even before the attack in Vienna began, two Islamists in Germany are said to have started to delete their communication with the later attacker on their cell phones and social media profiles – at least according to the findings of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The men are therefore suspected of being not only friends of the Vienna assassin, but possibly also confidants.
Searches in Osnabrück and Kassel
On Wednesday morning, the Attorney General therefore had the apartments of the two Islamists in Osnabrück and Kassel searched again. There is a German and a Kosovar. The charge against them is: failure to report planned crimes. The accused might have known that Kujtim F. was planning an attack and would not have reported this, but “accepted his act with approval”, so the Attorney General. Both “also pursue a radical Islamic attitude and were in close contact with Kujtim F. via social media for a long time before the act.” They later tried to disguise a connection to him.
Shortly after the attack in Vienna, there were raids on contact persons of Kujtim F. in this country, and telephones and other data carriers were confiscated. And the Islamists continued to be monitored by the BKA and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The BKA’s suspicion: Both extremists, who suspiciously deleted their communication with the Vienna attacker, may have been privy to his attack planning.
Shortly after the Viennese Islamist acquired the assault rifle that was later used, the Islamists from Germany are said to have traveled to Vienna for several days in July 2020. They are said to have stayed in the apartment of the later attacker and met with other extremists from Austria and Switzerland. At the time, this meeting was temporarily monitored by the Austrian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, following a tip from the German security authorities.
DNA traces on murder weapons
Just a few days after the Islamist meeting in Vienna, the Austrian authorities received important information from Slovakia. The later assassin and one other person are said to have tried to buy ammunition in an arms shop in Bratislava. However, the information was not passed on to the responsible authorities in Austria.
As has since been determined, the DNA of some Islamists who were present at the meeting in Vienna in July 2020 is said to have been found on the weapons that were used in the attack – as well as on a signet ring of the IS terrorist militia the assassin wore during the act. The investigators therefore assume that some people knew at least early on that the Islamist was in possession of weapons and possibly also that he was planning an attack.
In Germany, the contact persons of Kujtim F., including the German and the Kosovar, who were searched on Wednesday, have long been in the focus of the authorities. More than a year ago, a danger prevention process called “Metaphor” was initiated at the BKA in order to clear up a possible terrorist network that is supposed to extend over Germany, Austria, Switzerland and some states of the Western Balkans. This network, to which the Vienna attacker is said to have belonged, is called the “Lions of the Balkans”.
The investigators assume that it was mainly young Islamists who networked, the majority of whom did not fight in Syria or Iraq, but still cling to the ideology of IS. It is a question of a “new generation” of jihadists, some of whom have close family connections in the Balkans and are networked with local Islamist actors via chat groups, according to security circles. Radical Islamic preachers and also returned Syria fighters are suspected of being instrumental in controlling the network.