The Austrian government has agreed on the anti-terror pact designed as a reaction to the attack in the city centre of Vienna. No more major changes were made compared to the appraisal. This means that there will be a separate criminal offence for religiously motivated extremism and the possibility will be created to monitor relevantly convicted offenders by electronic ankle tag during their probation.
The latter was weakened insofar as the sentence must exceed 18 months. In addition, the judge must specify certain places where the conditionally released person is not allowed to stay, for example mosques where radicalisation has taken place. Here, the regulations are based on those for sex offenders, as Justice Minister Alma Zadic (Greens) explained Friday afternoon at the announcement of the measures.
As far as the new criminal law, which was criticised as unnecessary in the evaluation, has been clarified in the explanations. Here it is explicitly made clear that this regulation is not directed against a specific religion, as Zadic emphasised. The Minister of Justice justified the introduction of the law at all by saying that no loophole should be created. It is aimed at cases where the paragraph dealing with anti-state connections might not apply.
Integration Minister Susanne Raab ( Austrian People’s Party) also emphasised that the legislative package was not directed against Muslims. Rather, it is about combating religiously motivated extremism. Her part of the package contains, for example, the imam directory, which is also not without controversy.
The Minister of the Interior, Karl Nehammer ( Austrian People’s Party), for example, has introduced a tightening of the law on the use of symbols. According to this, the political sphere of Hezbollah will also be covered and further action will be taken against the Identitarians.