Image: APA/GEORG HOCHMUTH
On Tuesday, a 32-year-old Slovene was held accountable at the Vienna Regional Court who, according to the indictment, had delivered a Tokarev pistol and 35 rounds of ammunition to the attacker from Vienna on September 25, 2020. The defendant made a confession but emphasized that he did not give the pistol directly to the assassin. He never met him and didn’t know his intentions either.
He was sentenced to nine months imprisonment. After a nearly 40-minute hearing, the man was found guilty of a total of three violations of the Weapons Act – illegal possession and transfer of the handgun and ammunition. “You don’t have to spend your sentence in prison if you age well in the next three years,” the judge told the 32-year-old. He accepted the sentence, but the prosecutor initially made no statement. The judgment is therefore not final.
The assassin took the pistol with him in the terrorist attack on the evening of November 2, 2020 downtown, where he killed four passers-by with an assault rifle before being shot dead by the police. He is also said to have gotten the gun from the Slovene. The Zastava M70 – a model manufactured in former Yugoslavia and based on the technology of the Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle – is no longer the subject of the trial – due to an “unacceptable error” by the Vienna public prosecutor’s office, as Justice Minister Alma Zadic (Greens) admitted on the Whitsun weekend .
In 2021, the prosecution erroneously dropped a case in which the Slovene was involved. Marsel O. can therefore no longer be held responsible for the delivery of the Zastava in June 2020 – a possible violation of the War Material Act. With regard to the handgun, he is only accused of an offense under the Weapons Act, which results in a reduction in the range of punishment. If convicted in accordance with the charge, the arms dealer now faces a maximum of two years in prison. The 32-year-old is at large, the Vienna public prosecutor’s office had never requested his arrest. The lapse at the public prosecutor’s office, which became known only a few days ago, already had consequences. Minister of Justice Zadic initiated an administrative review and ordered a strengthening of internal supervision and structural changes in the Vienna prosecutor’s office.
Source: Nachrichten
