Mother of the Vienna assassin: “I think someone helped”

When asked by a jury if she thought multiple people were involved in the assassination or if her son carried out the assassination alone, she said, “I think someone helped.”

Accused longtime friends of the assassin

The woman could not provide any more specific information. “I can’t prove it. I think so,” she replied when asked by a defense attorney. According to her statement, however, two of the accused – 22 and 24 years old – were her son’s closest, and in her opinion even the only, long-term friends. She was “surprised that the circle of friends was so large,” which she only found out “from the media,” said the woman. Her son always “mentioned only the two names,” she referred to the second and third accused.

The public prosecutor accuses these two men of helping the assassin choose the target for the attack and of having helped him prepare for the attack before the attack. They are said to have visited him in his apartment on Wagramer Strasse a few hours before the shots were fired in the city centre. The assassin set out from there on the evening of November 2, 2020 in pursuit of his murderous terrorist intentions. Like the rest of the accused, the two men deny direct involvement in the attack and its planning.

The mother stated that she recently had “a very good relationship” with her son. Although he had his own apartment, he was regularly with his parents (“I was glad he was there”), his mother did the laundry for him and he helped himself from the fridge. She knew from her son that since August 2020 he had temporarily made his apartment available to a man because he had difficulties with his wife – it was the fourth accused, a 28-year-old of Afghan descent.