Austrian attacker was under surveillance as known jihadist but 'mistakes' led to investigation being dropped

Reuters
Mon, 09 Nov 2020 01:43 UTC

© BMI / Austrian Interior Ministry / AFP

FILE PHOTO: Austrian policemen stand near a mosque in Vienna on November 6, 2020.

Austrian authorities watched a meeting in Vienna this summer between foreign Islamists and the jihadist who killed four people last week, and trailed him for days but then stopped, news agency APA reported on Monday.

Austria has acknowledged that "intolerable mistakes were made" in the handling of intelligence on the attacker, a convicted jihadist, who killed four people in a shooting rampage in the centre of Vienna last Monday. He was shot dead by police.

First Vienna said it had mishandled information from Slovakia that the gunman had tried to buy ammunition there in July. Then it admitted he had met people from Germany who were under observation there and who travelled to Austria, and that could have led it to see him as a greater threat.

On Monday it confirmed a report by Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag that he had also met two Islamists arrested in Switzerland in connection with the attack who had travelled to Vienna between July 16 and July 20.

"A meeting took place in Vienna among the people (you) addressed from Germany and Switzerland but there were also people present at the meeting with the later assailant who were arrested in the context of the investigation," Director General for Public Security Franz Ruf told a news conference when asked about the reported July meeting.

"It was a larger circle of people that met. Some spent the night, the rest then left," he added.

Austrian domestic intelligence monitored the meeting and the attacker for days, observing how he and acquaintances picked up the four visitors from Germany and Switzerland at Vienna airport and showed them around the city. But it broke off the tailing operation just as he travelled to Slovakia, APA reported.

Why that operation was halted is unclear, APA said. The Interior Ministry was not immediately available for comment.

"New disturbing failures come in almost by the hour," Stephanie Krisper, a senior lawmaker from the liberal Neos opposition party said on Twitter, referring to the tail.

The head of Austria's main domestic intelligence agency for Vienna has stepped down temporarily pending an investigation into what went wrong.

Austrian intelligence is "traditionally weak and must be strengthened" as part of a previously planned and continuing overhaul, Ruf said.

Comment: RT report s that, now, after the tragedy, Austria has arrested 30 other people with suspected terrorist links:

'A strike against breeding ground for extremism'

The Austrian authorities have conducted sweeping raids across the country against people with suspected ties to extremist groups. The operation took place a week after a deadly terrorist attack in Vienna.

As part of the action, dubbed Operation Ramses, police searched 60 apartments, houses, and businesses early on Monday morning. The raids were carried out in Vienna and the regions of Styria, Carinthia, and Lower Austria.

The authorities have arrested 30 people with suspected links to the Islamist groups Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. According to the prosecutor's office in the city of Graz, more than 70 suspects are being investigated for possible ties to terrorist organizations.

"We have succeeded in striking against the breeding ground for extremism," Interior Minister Karl Nehammer told reporters after the raids.

Integration Minister Susanne Raab said the action against the Muslim Brotherhood was aimed at preventing "the spread of extremist ideas in Austria," and showed that the country is "serious about the fight against radical, extremist ideologies."

The prosecutor's office clarified that Monday's raids had "no connection" with the terrorist attack in Vienna last week. On November 2, a gunman killed four people in the Austrian capital before being shot dead by police. The perpetrator was a 20-year-old man of Albanian origin and an Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) sympathizer who had previously been convicted for trying to join the militants in Syria.

Sixteen people were arrested in Austria immediately after the attack. Similar raids were carried out in neighboring Germany and Switzerland, where police detained several people with links to the perpetrator in the Vienna shooting.

It's rather suspect that so many terrorists are known to intelligence prior to their attacks but 'somehow' are let loose, and, each time, the same excuses are rolled out.

For other examples, see:

• Strasbourg Shooting: Everybody Knows Where Terror Comes From
• Convenient London Bridge Terrorist Attack Occurs Two Weeks Before General Election: UPDATES
• Manchester bombing: How British intelligence has coddled terrorists
• Joe Quinn on terror attack in Nice - should be seen in context, 'hands of Western powers extremely dirty' - PressTV
• Political Timing of Manchester Terror Attack is Suspicious
• Westminster 'Car Terror' Attack Raises Questions

And check out SOTT radio's:

• Behind the Headlines: Manufactured Terror: Busted Wide Open
• Behind the Headlines: Terror in Nice, attempted coup in Ankara
• Behind the Headlines: Paris Terror Attacks - Strategy of Tension