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‘Beer drinkers’ spark terror alert in Vienna

A large-scale police operation was launched on Sunday afternoon in Vienna’s Döbling district after two suspicious men were reported to have entered an empty Austrian Press Agency building in Gunoldstraße.

Published: 19 January 2015 10:22 CET

'Beer drinkers' spark terror alert in Vienna

File photo: APA

25 armed police wearing body armour and helmets and accompanied by sniffer dogs stormed the vacant building, which is next to the U4 metro line and several media companies.

A witness had reported seeing the two men observing the 14-storey building from a parked car. The witness said they then put on sports jackets and woollen hats and entered the building through a broken window, carrying long sports bags.

Armed police didn’t find anyone in the building so they withdrew and stationed a guard outside. Around 2.50pm one of the men ran past the building, got into his car and sped off towards Muthgasse, where he picked up the second suspect.

Police stopped the car, a Ford, and the suspects were ordered out at gunpoint.

Police said they were two Serbians, aged 34 and 27, from the Favoriten district of Vienna. The men had four mobile phones with them, but no trace was found of the sports bags.

They were released from police custody. According to a report in the Heute newspaper both men denied that they had been in the empty building and said that they had just been wandering around a nearby petrol station, drinking beer.

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What is the risk of new terror attacks in Austria?

With responsibility for the Moscow attack being taken by the Islamist terror organisation ISIS-K, national intelligence services are reevaluating the threat posed to targets within their borders.

‘No concrete threat’

Austrian officials have been quick to give their appraisal of the situation.

“We currently have the Islamist scene under control,” stressed Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, head of the Directorate of State Security & Intelligence (DSN) – the governmental agency responsible for combatting internal threats – in an interview with the Ö1 Morgenjournal radio programme on Tuesday.

He continued: “The terrorist attacks in Moscow, for example, definitely increase the risk. But at the moment, we do not see any concrete threat of an attack in Austria,”

Other experts and officials have warned that while there are no concrete threats, Austrians should not be complacent.

‘Situation is still valid’

Interior Minister Gerhard Karner announced tighter security at church festivals during the Easter period, in the days after the attack, and stressed that the high terror alert level introduced after the October 7 Hamas attacks was still in place.

“This increased risk situation is still valid,” noted Karner.

READ MORE: What does Austria’s raised terror alert mean for the public?

Meanwhile, terror researcher Peter Neumann of King’s College London told ORF’s ‘ZiB 2’ news broadcast on Monday that Austria remains a potential target due to its Central Asian migrant population.

Neumann noted that countries at most risk are those “in which Tajik and Central Asian diasporas exist and where ISIS-K finds it relatively easy to identify and recruit people”.

He continued, identifying both Austria and Germany as “countries in which the ISPK is particularly active and which are particularly at risk from terrorist attacks”.

New threats

Austria has not been spared from attacks from homegrown terrorists.

On November 2nd 2020, amid Coronavirus lockdowns, Austrian-born Kujtim Fejzulai shot and killed four, injuring twenty-three others during a shooting spree across Vienna. He was ultimately shot dead by police.

Fejzulai was already under surveillance by federal authorities for his beliefs and had been released from prison on parole less than a year before.

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