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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.

Published: 7 September 2024 09:02 CEST
Austrian investigators seize devices at Munich shooter's home
Police officers secure the area after the shooting in Munich. Photo: LUKAS BARTH-TUTTAS/AFP.

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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CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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