A prayer room? Don’t they know what every last non-Muslim politician in the Western world knows, that the Islamic State (ISIS) has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam?
“Ten-member Islamist group busted,” translated from “Zehnköpfige Islamistengruppe aufgeflogen,” OOE.orf.at, September 5, 2023:
A radical Islamic group has been broken up in the Linz-Land district, according to the Directorate for State Security and Intelligence (DSN). Nine men and one woman aged 15 to 23 are said to have been involved with the terrorist organizations Islamic State (IS) and the Emirate of Caucasus.
The suspects come from Austria, Turkey, Iraq, Russia and Croatia or are stateless. They live in the Linz-Land district, some have criminal records. They are said to have campaigned for the terrorist groups and planned to set up a dedicated prayer room that would have been decorated with an IS flag. Dozens of mobile phones, laptops, PCs, other data carriers and propaganda material were seized during house searches in early July. An 18-year-old is now in custody. The spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, Patrick Maierhofer, said in an interview with ORF Upper Austria that the group generally had a terrorist attitude.
Investigation on suspicion of terrorist organization
In addition, the group is accused of having instigated a 19-year-old man who sprayed IS graffiti in St. Pölten and committed further damage to property – who has not yet been legally sentenced to two years of partial imprisonment. The suspects are being investigated on suspicion of criminal and terrorist organization. For reasons of tactical investigation, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is still reticent about the details. Provincial Governor Thomas Stelzer from the ÖVP welcomes the – as he says – success of the investigation and emphasizes that extremism has no place in Upper Austria. For the Green Club Chairman in the state parliament, Severin Mayr, lessons must be learned from each case and the relevant action plan revised.