The men range in age from 21 to 31 years. The prosecution confirmed the spokeswoman for the prosecution, Nina Bussek, on Wednesday evening of the APA. It is not yet legally effective, the defendants’ defense lawyers have the opportunity to object to it.
The accused are essentially accused of the crimes of participation in terrorist offenses (Section 278c Paragraph 2 StGB) in connection with murder, terrorist organization (Section 278b Paragraph 2 StGB) and criminal organization (Section 278a StGB). The 32-year-old – a man of Chechen descent – is said to have obtained a fully automatic Zastava assault rifle, model 70AB2 and the appropriate ammunition for the assassin, who was shot by the police, through an intermediary from Slovenia and handed it over on June 23, 2020. The assassin is said to have received a Tokarev pistol and ammunition from the 32-year-old on September 25, 2020 through the same intermediary.
Four people killed, 23 injured
The assassin then carried out a terrorist attack in the city center on November 2, 2020, killing four passers-by and injuring 23 people, some seriously, before he was shot dead by the police. In April 2019, together with a now accused – a 24-year-old man – he was sentenced by the Vienna Regional Court to 22 months in prison for being part of a terrorist organization because he distributed propaganda material from the radical Islamist terrorist militia “Islamic State” (IS), justified their methods and objectives and had also tried to get to Syria to take part in combat operations there. In December 2019, both men were released from prison, taking into account pre-trial detention. Despite their prejudice and their ongoing support from the Derad association, they stuck to their radical Islamist views and their fundamentalist ideas and, according to the indictment, “continued to be loyal supporters of IS”. Through social media and in the form of personal meetings, they kept “lively contact with other people from the radical Islamist scene,” states the public prosecutor’s office in their 117-page indictment, which is available to the APA.
As a result, the assassin is said to have been working on plans for a terrorist attack while he was still in prison. The indictment speaks of “considerations” about “performing a terrorist attack using firearms in downtown Vienna after his release”. According to the indictment, the later assassin asked a fellow inmate how weapons could be obtained in Austria, since he wanted to carry out an attack on Stephansplatz after his release. The assassin made no secret of his terrorist intentions “in detention,” emphasized the public prosecutor. After he was released, from April 2020 he was “more and more intensively” concerned with it.
Source: Nachrichten
