According to the indictment, the 24-year-old AG’s apartment in St. Pölten was a “hub” for several members of the jihadist scene. The Islamist assassin responsible for the attack in Vienna, KF, was also repeatedly to be found in this apartment. Now the trial against AG began in Vienna
Under the guard of black-masked and heavily armed prison guards, a three-day terror trial began on Wednesday in the Vienna Criminal Court. The accused is 24-year-old AG, a contact of the Islamist KF, who killed four people in downtown Vienna on November 2, 2020 and injured two dozen others, some seriously. KF was shot dead by the police during the attack. The now accused AG is accused of “terrorist organization” and membership in a criminal organization. He pleads not guilty.
His client “perhaps has a very conservative attitude”,
but even if this is a Salafist, that alone is not punishable,
said lawyer Sascha Flatz. And: “We still have freedom of religion.” The defense attorney also recalled that AG had been “in solitary confinement for two years”. In fact, the young man was arrested three weeks after the Vienna attack. Since then he has been behind bars.
The defendant, who was born and raised in St. Pölten (he is a North Macedonian citizen), a trained IT and communications technician, had been friends with the later assassin since 2017, according to the indictment. So far, AG has not been able to prove that it was directly involved in the attack. But: “An investigation in this regard is still open,” said the prosecutor. The judge added: If a terror connection could be proven, “we would be sitting in front of a jury.” To explain: Because in this case murder would probably be charged, which a jury would have to decide.
Already at 14 in the focus of state security
On the accused, whom the public prosecutor as a member of
Terror-Miliz”Islamic State” (IS), the intelligence agency had already become aware at the age of 14. The school he attended at the time reported that the boy had radical Islamist tendencies.
At the age of 18, he founded the “Ansar” movement, which according to the public prosecutor represented the ideology of the IS. He taught religion and Islam in the prayer rooms of the St. Pölten University Clinic and also held examinations. He was therefore charged in 2017, but acquitted in case of doubt. Then the man transferred his teaching position to a mosque. The content he preached was too radical for the imam, so the accused rented an apartment in St. Pölten in the summer of 2020, which became the focus of state security officers months before the terrorist attack. In addition to Arabic courses, religious lectures with Salafist content are said to have been held in the apartment. AG: “The St. Pölten Muslims should meet in the apartment.”
And: “My friends and I were in the apartment. We talked and chilled. I then said, let’s have Arabic lessons.” AG himself was still living with his parents at this time. Soon there were Arabic lessons in the apartment on Thursdays and Saturdays. On Sundays, according to the accused, there were “Sunday meetings with friends from Vienna and St. Pölten.”
“KF was in the apartment two or three times”
The later assassin KF also frequented the apartment, he was in front
particularly interested in lectures with religious content. Last
he was seen in the St. Pölten apartment at the end of October 2020, a few days before the attack. He is said to have worn the signet ring of the Prophet, a so-called IS ring. AG: “I really have no idea.” But even if that had been the case: “For me it’s not an IS ring.”
According to the indictment, the later assassin was one of up to 20 participants in the “Sunday meetings”. One was personally invited to these meetings, and “exclusively radical Islamist ideas” were preached at these meetings, the prosecutor specified.
AG: “In my opinion, KF was in the apartment two or three times at the Sunday meetings.” And: “If the meetings had had a radical or political content, I would have interrupted it.”
In addition to the meetings, he is also accused of translating and distributing books by an Islamist and distributing IS propaganda material in relevant chat channels. The prosecutor said the content came “directly from IS media outlets.”
AG stated that he did not translate the books. The questioning by the judge revealed that he could at least have corrected the text translated into German.
Although AG had well-formulated answers to practically every question, there was one point where it “closed”. When asked by the judge whether two specific Islamists (the judge named them) had also been at the meeting in the St. Pölten apartment, the 24-year-old replied: “I don’t want to comment on that.”
Operation Luxor: Another procedural setting
Incidentally, after the attack it became known, as reported, that the Palestinians who had pulled a police officer out of the field of fire on the night of terror and were then celebrated as a “hero” were being investigated on suspicion of financing terrorism – in the part of Operation Luxor. This process is now about to be discontinued. No evidence was found against the “hero of the terror night”.