With showroom – Illegal arms trade “professionally set up”

About 35 long guns, 25 submachine guns, about 100 pistols, more than a thousand weapon parts, about 400 signal weapons and more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as grenade launchers and smoke and smoke grenade launchers were found, the Director General of the Public Prosecution Service reported. Security Franz Ruf on Thursday. The authorities have long focused on the militarization of the far-right scene.

Illegal arms depot with sales area
The detectives not only found a large number of weapons, but also a “professionally set up illegal gun shop with sales space” in a farmhouse, said Alois Ebner, head of the investigating prosecutor’s office in Ried im Innkreis. Some of the weapons were displayed in display cases in the basement. The suspects have not yet commented on this, according to Ebner.

In the run-up to the raids, four people were arrested in the course of the investigation, six more were added on Monday. According to Andreas Holzer, head of the federal criminal investigation department, the detainees had already attracted attention on Thursday for bodily harm and extortion, as well as hate speech against the migrant community and anti-Semitic statements. Some of them have already been convicted under the Prohibition Act.

“Leader” arrested by neo-Nazi group
Among those arrested was a “high-ranking leader” of the former neo-Nazi group “Object 21”. There are many overlaps between the two groups, both in structure and at the management level, said the head of the federal criminal investigation department, Andreas Holzer. Many members of the rocker group also have connections to “Object 21”.

This neo-Nazi group operated under the guise of a “cultural and leisure association”, funding it from serious crime until it was dismantled in 2013. Several members have been sentenced to long prison terms for repeated activity as well as a host of other crimes, and the gang’s leader remains in prison.

Detected since 2021
The arrests and house searches on Monday were preceded by months of investigations in which the Directorate for State Security and Intelligence (DSN), the Upper Austrian Criminal Investigation Service and the Federal Criminal Investigation Service worked together. Against the The “Outlaw Motorbike Group” has been conducting research since spring 2021. In this branch of the international motorcycle club “Bandidos” – classified as a criminal organization in Austria – the major weapon discovery was made on Monday.

DSN director Omar Haijawi-Pirchner emphasized that violent attacks by right-wing extremists were observed time and time again and that the weapons could have been used for that purpose. There were also “gang wars” among the “rocker groups” because of “territorial claims,” ​​Ruf added. The Corium working group “has dealt a major blow to organized motorcycle crime and to the extreme right-wing environment. Austria should not be a land of hope for neo-Nazis and organized armed gangs,” he affirmed.

“Serious Threat”
“The seizure of automatic weapons is an alarming indication of how dangerous this scene is,” Justice Minister Alma Zadic (Greens) said in a statement on right-wing extremism. This constitutes “a serious threat to our society and democracy” and must be combated by all means.

“This case shows once again how comprehensive and sustainable democratic coexistence is protected in our country,” Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) stressed in a written statement. “Extremism – whether politically or religiously motivated” is vigorously opposed.