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Austria faces ‘heightened danger’ of terror attack

The head of Austria’s federal anti-terrorism unit (BVT), Peter Gridling, says that Austria faces a heightened danger of a terrorist attack.

Published: 14 October 2016 10:02 CEST

Austria faces 'heightened danger' of terror attack

Cobra anti-terrorism forces. Photo: armedforcesmuseum.com

Speaking ahead of a major anti-terrorism exercise in Vienna this evening, he said: “we must not close our eyes and ignore the dangers”. According to the BVT the main danger comes from jihadists returning from conflict zones in the Middle East, or those who tried to leave Austria to fight with the Islamic State group and were prevented from doing so.

Gridling added that the number of known jihadists in Austria is currently around 288. The ‘hotspots’ for radicalization in Austria are Vienna, Styria and Lower Austria, he said.

However, the number of active or potential jihadists from Austria has slightly fallen in 2016 – which Gridling said was down to the action of security forces and judicial authorities, with prison sentences for those attempting to join the Islamic State acting as a deterrent.

Gridling said that he couldn’t rule out that radical jihadis had entered Austria along with the influx of refugees and that they may have been able to set up a terror sleeper cell.

Gridling said that xenophobic crimes and hostility towards asylum seekers and foreigners had increased along with the terror threat and that it was regrettable that anti-foreigner sentiment and language that was once heard only in extreme right-wing circles had now become part of normal discourse.

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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