“Imminent Danger” – When terror lures children to their mobile phones

A 14-year-old student is detained with his friend (17). As reported, his older brother (20) was released on Sunday. Although all three (all Austrian citizens) were taken out of circulation by state security agents shortly before the start of the rainbow parade because they would have planned an attack on the colorful event together. “There was danger ahead” – as it is officially called.

Surprisingly, the eldest of the trio, whom many suspected was the mastermind, was released. “There was no urgent suspicion in his case,” explains Leopold Bien from the St. Pölten public prosecutor’s office.

When children become a state problem
Which means: the danger clearly comes from the two underage suspects. The 14-year-old teenager living in Vienna with Chechen roots and the 17-year-old living in St. Pölten with Bosnian roots. That shocked everyone except the researchers.

“According to our observations, almost 80 percent of young people are now being radicalized through the internet. It doesn’t matter if it’s from the Islamic or far-right side,” said terror expert Nicolas Stockhammer.

Assessments confirmed by Lisa Fellhofer, director of the Documentation Center for Political Islam: “Young people are often unconsciously confronted with Islamist ideas, especially via TikTok. Some videos with relevant content are viewed more than 1 million times.”

The deradicalization association Derad said on Monday that radicalization on the internet is not a new phenomenon: “It has been happening for about 30 years. Only the platforms have changed.” Very young customers are regularly taken into account. According to Derad, there are currently about 50 Islamic threats in Vienna alone. “Each of them is potentially capable of launching an attack,” the NGO warned.

DNS calls for eavesdropping on potential extremists
And a detective who knows the scene summarizes it in a nutshell: “Islamists used to lure young people to backyard mosques. Brainwashing is now taking place via the internet.” That is why the head of the Directorate of State Security and Intelligence, Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, is not for the first time calling on the judiciary to be given more powers to eavesdrop on potential extremists: “Meanwhile, communication also takes place via game consoles and their chat functions . And here we unfortunately have no legal means of control.”

The extremism researcher Peter R. Neumann also points out that the age of the alleged perpetrators should no longer come as a surprise. “At the time, during the heyday of IS, the typical profile of an Islamist was male, between the ages of 18 and 25,” explains the professor of security studies at London’s Kings College.

“But that is something that no longer applies today,” says the expert. The “demographic range” has changed. “Today we also see 12-year-olds as extremists, just as it can be the other way around. The picture has become more diverse,” says Neumann.

Expert: TikTok does too little against terrorism
Neumann emphasizes that radicalization tendencies around the world would generally decline. “There is proportionally much less radicalization today,” says the expert, “because the networks have broken up and certain radical mosques no longer exist to the extent they used to exist.” However, the Chinese app TikTok would have huge advantages in the recruitment process.

In this context, the expert criticized the app. TikTok has not yet done enough to counter such trends. “Such platforms grow relatively quickly and only build up the necessary capabilities under political pressure.” In the current case, the evaluation of the data carriers and mobile phones of the suspected young people is still in full swing.