Questions mount over tracking of Vienna gunman
05 November, 2020
Questions were mounting in Austria on Wednesday about how precisely a convicted Islamic State sympathiser could perform the deadly gun rampage in the heart of the administrative centre Vienna.
Investigators are trying to piece together more details about the gunman's circle after detaining 14 people in the wake of Monday's shooting, the first major attack in Austria for many years and the first blamed on a jihadist.
The assailant, named as 20-year-old dual Austrian-Macedonian national Kujtim Fejzulai, have been convicted and sentenced to prison in April this past year for trying to go to Syria and join IS.
But he premiered on probation in December, prior to the end of his 22-month sentence, and have been referred to organizations focusing on de-radicalization.
The Islamic State group -- which has claimed numerous attacks in Europe -- said Tuesday a "soldier of the caliphate" was responsible for the shooting, which killed four persons and left more wounded.
The gunman opened fire indiscriminately in the historic centre of the city just hours before Austria imposed a coronavirus lockdown, when persons were out in bars and restaurants enjoying your final nights relative freedom.
The streets of Vienna were returning to normal on Wednesday -- albeit under the virus restrictions -- after schools and shops had largely stayed closed after the attack.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has described your choice to release Fejzulai -- who was simply shot dead by police on Monday evening -- as "definitely wrong".
"If he previously not been released then your terror attack wouldn't normally have already been possible," Kurz told public broadcaster ORF on Tuesday.
Austria's top security chief Franz Ruf told local media that at his last session of a publicly-funded de-radicalization program in late October, Fejzulai had condemned the recent jihadist attacks in France.
Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said Tuesday the attacker had successfully "fooled" the programs to be able to achieve his early release.
Nehammer said his case had proven up a "fracture" in the machine and that raids at Fejzulai's home after the attack revealed plentiful proof his radical views.
He referred to a Facebook post where Fejzulai posed with the Kalashnikov and the machete he'd continue to use in the attack, as well as IS slogans.
"Nobody would have thought him capable of something similar to this," Nikolaus Rast, the attorney who represented Fejzulai this past year, told AFP on Wednesday.
He also raised questions about possible oversights by the de-radicalization programs Fejzulai had attended.
"Without attempting to put the blame on someone, if they're the experts, why didn't they notice anything?" Rast said.
"They must have had the most -- and the last -- connection with him."
Police are now working on the assumption that Fejzulai was the only real gunman, following the authorities initially feared in the aftermath of the attack that more than one assailant could possibly be at large.
They have completed 18 raids and made 14 arrests over the killings, and Ruf said it was possible some of those becoming questioned by police could be accomplices.
The investigation is spanning several countries, with Switzerland making two arrests and Macedonia, where Fejzulai has family roots, cooperating with the Austrian authorities.
Kurz on Tuesday called for an EU response to "political Islam", saying the ideology was "dangerous" for European freedoms and values.
His office said Wednesday he had experienced touch with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss joint initiatives in the fight against terrorism.
The recent re-publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in France has caused new tensions worldwide, sparking protests in a few Muslim-majority countries and calls from several terror groups for their followers to take revenge.
France itself has seen a deadly assault on churchgoers in the Mediterranean city of Nice and the beheading of a schoolteacher near Paris.
Source: japantoday.com
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