The State Office for State Protection and Counter-Extremism in Lower Austria (LSE NÖ) was able to uncover an IS network in St. Pölten. Two arrests and eight house searches were ordered by court order. A 20-year-old is considered to be the head of the organization, eight other members are between 13 and 15 years old.
The head of the network is therefore an offender convicted in March 2023 as the “IS Sprayer of St. Pölten”. He is currently in custody. The other members of the network are between 13 and 15 years old.
The 20-year-old “IS sprayer” had already attracted attention in March 2023 with several IS graffiti in the area of St. Pölten’s main railway station. In the summer of 2023, Bashkim B. was sentenced to several months’ imprisonment on the strong suspicion of supporting a terrorist organization and damage to propert
He did not seem to want to learn from his mistakes. Shortly after his release from prison in November 2023, he began recruiting other young people in St. Pölten for IS and indoctrinating the attack by the terrorist organization Hamas – which is responsible for the attack on Israel on 7 October in which around 1,200 people died – as religiously legitimate.
He not only managed to win over a total of eight young people aged between 13 and 15 to the ideology of the Islamic State, but also to spread this ideology even further. The teenagers disseminated numerous “IS combat nasheeds” and “IS videos”, including execution videos, on the internet. The aim was to recruit other young people to join IS. The young people did not stop at anti-Semitic propaganda for Hamas and against Israel. The young suspects showed massive radicalization by Bashkim B. within a very short time.
The police investigation was initiated after the parents of a member of the association became concerned about the progressive radicalization of their son by the 20-year-old head of the network. “The State Office for State Protection and Counter-Extremism is taking tough, consistent and emphatic action against all forms of extremism. Regardless of whether they are Islamist extremists or right-wing extremist idiots,” emphasized Interior Minister Gerhard Karner. During questioning by the Lower Austrian police, the suspects ultimately confessed.
In contrast to the 20-year-old Bashkim B.: He was arrested on April 2, 2024 and taken to St. Pölten prison; to date, the 20-year-old has not confessed, but is considered an urgent suspect. Several books, cell phones and IS rings were seized during a house search. The rings bore the Shahada, an Islamic creed, and the seal of the “Prophet Mohammed”.
In chats and personal conversations, he displayed his Islamist, anti-democratic and Western values-rejecting attitude. He claimed that it was reprehensible and forbidden to “sympathize with the Austrian state or cooperate with the police”. At the beginning of October 2024, 20-year-old Bashkim B. was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for membership of a terrorist organization by the St. Pölten Regional Court without a final conviction.
The indoctrination of a 15-year-old member of the network went so far that he even became a “recruiter” himself and recruited other people for IS. His radicalization was also noticeable at school, where he dressed conspicuously and no longer accepted female teachers. During an excursion, he is said to have worn an IS ring and made a video “pledge of allegiance” to IS. He was also sentenced to a conditional prison sentence of one year at the beginning of October.
Two other 15-year-old members also disseminated IS propaganda videos via the social network Tiktok, one of whom stated during police questioning that he had “celebrated beheadings and dreamed of flying into buildings in an airplane like the attacker of September 11, 2001”. All three exhibited particularly aggressive traits of moral guardian behavior. Their statements incriminated the 20-year-old “head” of the network.
All members have already been convicted or are currently undergoing criminal proceedings. The proceedings against the 13-year-old member were dropped due to his immaturity.