Two suspects have been arrested after a possible planned attack by Islamists on the 27th Rainbow Parade in Vienna. The alleged perpetrators are only 14 and 17 years old. A third suspect has been released.
According to a spokesman, the court does not assume that there is an urgent suspicion of a crime. The older brother of the 17-year-old (20) was able to leave the St. Pölten prison, where the three boys were held. The Public Prosecution Service is investigating the suspected Islamists on the basis of terrorist organization and criminal organization. St. Pölten is responsible because the two brothers live there. The 14-year-old suspect lives in Vienna.
Arrest shortly before the parade
According to the head of the Directorate of State Security and Intelligence (DSN), Otmar Haijawi-Pirchner, the three suspects were arrested at noon on Saturday. That was an hour before the parade got moving. A cancellation of the event was therefore “obviously discussed” in advance, but it was decided against because it could be ruled out that the three boys had accomplices. According to Haijawi-Pirchner, the suspects were already known to the police. They were part of the radical Islamic scene and relevant on the internet.
Contact with environment of Viennese assassin
One of them had already been investigated in the past for being a terrorist organization, but the case was dropped. As is known, the Viennese bomber, who committed a terrorist attack in the federal capital on November 2, 2020, shooting down four bystanders, may have radicalized in the apartment of a radical Islamist preacher in St. Pölten, among other things. According to the current state of the investigation, the suspects who have now been arrested knew neither the murderer nor the Salafist preacher Argjend G. personally, whose apartment in St. Pölten the later Viennese murderer had visited several times. However, they may have met people from the area in chat groups.
The two boys and the young man are Austrian citizens of Bosnian and Chechen descent respectively. They said they wanted to carry out an attack “with a knife or a car”. According to their plans, the attack should be carried out in Vienna, with the rainbow parade as a “possible target”.
First, the extensive evidence should be evaluated. Among them are mobile phones, weapons, throwing stars, gas pressure cannons as well as a saber and secure data carriers. For the participants of the rainbow parade, there should never have been “a special danger”. According to the police, the alleged perpetrators were “closely monitored” and 700 officers, including special forces, were present.
Source: Krone
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