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Second arrest in Vienna terrorist bomb plot

German police said Sunday they have arrested a man accused of having ties to a suspected Islamic extremist captured in Austria and thought to have been plotting an attack.

Published: 22 January 2017 19:54 CET
Second arrest in Vienna terrorist bomb plot
Neuss Town Hall. Photo: Michael Reschke/Wikimedia

A spokesman for state police in North Rhine-Westphalia said the man, 21, was taken into custody on Saturday in the western city of Neuss on a warrant for “planning a serious crime targeting the state”.

A spokesman for the Austrian interior ministry, Karl-Heinz Grundboeck, confirmed that the arrest “is linked” to that of a 17-year-old man — not 18 as previously indicated — in Vienna on Friday evening.

“Investigations are continuing,” Grundboeck told AFP.

Both German and Austrian authorities declined to comment further but media reports in both countries said that the two had experimented with making explosives in the flat in Neuss.

German news magazine Focus had reported earlier, citing judicial sources, that the elite SEK command force had stormed the man's flat on suspicion he was planning a bombing targeting police and soldiers.

German police confiscated computers and mobile phones from the home, and the suspect's wife was temporarily detained for questioning, according to the reports.

They added that the Austrian suspect has told investigators that he had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State (Isis) group and revealed the link to the alleged accomplice in Germany.

Austrian authorities said that the suspect, who turns 18 in the coming days, was transferred to the Justizanstalt Josefstadt prison in Vienna on Sunday afternoon.

Press reports named him as Lorenz K., born in Austria to parents of Albanian origin and who grew up in the small town of Neunkirchen south of Vienna.

The reports said that he possibly became radicalised while serving a year in prison from 2014-15 for assault.

Germany has been on high alert since a Tunisian failed asylum seeker, Anis Amri, ploughed a lorry through a crowded Berlin Christmas market in December in an attack that killed 12 people.

Isis claimed the deadly assault.

Austria has been spared in the string of attacks by Islamist extremists in recent years suffered by other European countries, but has beefed up security measures.

TERRORISM

What is the risk of new terror attacks in Austria?

Following the March 22nd attack in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall that left over 140 dead, European governments are evaluating the threat of terror attacks. Is Austria a target for fresh terrorist attacks?

Published: 28 March 2024 12:32 CET
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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