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Isis teen brides in court on terror charges

Two teenage girls are appearing in court in Salzburg on Friday, charged with participating in a terrorist group.

Published: 23 October 2015 10:37 CEST

Isis teen brides in court on terror charges

Salzburg regional court. Photo: SN/APA

The 16-year-old native Chechen from Salzburg and the 18-year-old Bosnian from Upper Austria tried to travel to Syria last December to become brides of Islamic State (Isis) fighters.

The two girls met on the internet after becoming radicalised by Isis propaganda they found online.

The 16-year-old actually married an Isis fighter from Tunisia in a ceremony carried out via an online phone call. Prosecutors say that the 18-year-old planned to marry an Isis fighter once she arrived in Syria, in order to give him moral support.

Both girls took off their veils so they would not attract attention as they began their journey from Austria to Syria by train.

However, the family of the Chechen girl became worried when their daughter disappeared and notified police. The girls were stopped by border police on the Hungarian Serbian border and held in police custody for three days. Since their release they have been cared for by youth welfare officers.

Two girls from Styria will appear as witnesses in court on Friday – after recently receiving 12 and 14 month probationary sentences after they planned to join Isis jihadists.

Membership of a terrorist organisation carries a prison sentence of between one and ten years.

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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