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POLICE

Austria drops probe into far-right activists over New Zealand massacre

Austrian prosecutors said Friday they had dropped an inquiry into far-right activists over possible links with the perpetrator of a massacre of Muslims in New Zealand in 2019.

Austria drops probe into far-right activists over New Zealand massacre
Photo: JOE KLAMAR / AFP

Martin Sellner, the co-founder of the Identitarian Movement of Austria (IBOe), came under investigation together with some of his associates when it emerged that in 2018 he had received a donation of 1,500 euros ($1,800) from Brenton Tarrant.

White supremacist Tarrant killed 51 Muslim worshippers in attacks on two mosques in the city of Christchurch in March 2019.

Sellner admitted to having had contact with Tarrant on several occasions and prosecutors looked into whether charges could be brought against him or those close to him for “participation in a terrorist organisation”.

ANALYSIS: Vienna terror attack was 'only a matter of time' 

But the spokesman for the prosecutors' department in the city of Graz, Hansjoerg Bacher, confirmed to AFP that the investigation had been “dropped”.

Sellner's house was also searched as part of the investigation, but a court ruled in 2019 that the raid was illegal.

Sellner told AFP on Friday that investigations targeting his wife and the IBOe as an organisation had also been dropped last month.

Austrian media report that another investigation against Sellner for suspected fraud is however ongoing. The IBOe has been described by Austrian intelligence services as “agents of modern right-wing extremism”.

Sellner and the Identitarians are proponents of the far-right “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory according to which white Europeans are being deliberately supplanted by non-white immigrants.

Tarrant's manifesto was also titled “The Great Replacement”.

The Identitarians are also known for anti-immigrant stunts such as a 2017 incident in which members gained access to the roof of the Turkish embassy in Vienna, unfurling a banner addressing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and reading: “Erdogan, take your Turks home.”

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TERRORISM

Austrian investigators seize devices at Munich shooter’s home

Investigators seized electronic devices at the home of a young Austrian who fired shots near Israel's Munich consulate, but found no weapons or Islamic State group propaganda material, authorities said Friday.

Austrian investigators seize devices at Munich shooter's home

German police shot dead the 18-year-old man on Thursday when he fired a vintage rifle at them near the diplomatic building.

They said they were treating it as a “terrorist attack”, apparently timed to coincide with the anniversary of the killings of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games.

Authorities raided the gunman’s home in the Salzburg region, seizing electronic data carriers, Austria’s top security chief Franz Ruf told a press conference in Vienna on Friday.

READ ALSO: Munich Israeli consulate gunman was ‘Austrian national known to authorities’

During the raid, “no weapons or IS propaganda” material were found, Ruf added.

Despite being subject to a ban on owning and carrying weapons, the man managed to purchase a vintage carbine rifle fitted with a bayonet with around “fifty rounds of ammunition” for 400 euros ($445) the day before the attack, Ruf said.

He opened fire at around 9:00 am (0700 GMT) near the Israeli consulate, sparking a mobilisation of about 500 police in downtown Munich.

At a separate press conference in Munich, prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann said investigators were combing through the gunman’s electronic data but had yet to find conclusive evidence of his motive.

But the “working hypothesis” was that “the perpetrator acted out of Islamist or anti-Semitic motivation”, she told reporters.

Austrian police said on Thursday that the gunman, who had Bosnian roots, had previously been investigated on suspicion of links to terrorism.

Investigators last year found three videos he had recorded in 2021, showing scenes from a computer game “with Islamist content”, prosecutors said in a statement.

In one of them the suspect had used an avatar with a flag of the “al-Nusra Front”, a jihadist group active in Syria, said Ruf.

But the investigation was dropped in 2023 as there were no indications that he was active in “radical” circles, prosecutors said.

“The mere playing of a computer game or the re-enactment of violent Islamist scenes was not sufficient to prove intent to commit the offence,” they added.

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