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TERRORISM

Two years jail for teen who shared Isis videos

A 18-year-old man has been sentenced to two years imprisonment by Vienna’s Criminal Court, for sharing Islamic State group (Isis) propaganda material and belonging to a terrorist organisation.

Published: 14 September 2016 11:18 CEST
Two years jail for teen who shared Isis videos
Entrance to Vienna's Josefstadt prison. Photo: Plani/Wikimedia

The teenager, a native of Chechnya, has already served a prison sentence for armed robbery. He became radicalized in prison and began posting videos of Isis beheadings online.

He began serving a 14-month sentence for armed robbery, assault and extortion last summer. Prosecutors said that he came into contact with Islamic extremists both while in juvenile detention in Gerasdorf and in Vienna’s Josefstadt prison.

He told the court that he was first told about Isis by a fellow prisoner in Josefstadt. He said that after his release he found that many among his circle of friends had become increasingly religious. ‘Friends of mine had gone to Syria and died there,” he said.

He added that an uncle and a cousin of his had been in Syria and court transcripts showed that he had kept in close contact with his uncle – promising that they would meet in the near future.

The 18-year-old even created and shared his own propaganda video for Isis – and told friends that he planned to travel to Syria as soon as possible – despite having fled the conflict in Chechnya with his family when he was five years old.

His lawyer Mirsad Musliu told the court that his client was hugely traumatised by having grown up in the Chechen Republic, during the wars between Chechen rebels and the Russian military. “Other children his age were playing in sandpits – he was watching as people were killed,” Musliu said.

To avoid having to travel alone to Syria, the 18-year-old contacted three girls via the messenger services WhatsApp and Telegram, and became engaged to them under Islamic law. He said that he had a desperate need “to belong to something” and that he wanted to impress the girls by telling them he was travelling to a war zone – but that in reality he had never really intended to go to Syria.

When asked if he is aware of who Isis is fighting against in Syria, the accused admitted that he didn’t actually know: ‘I just know that they are fighting for religion.” He will have to serve an extra ten months on his sentence, having been granted an early release after his previous conviction for armed robbery.

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.

Published: 7 September 2024 09:02 CEST
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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