The Swiss security and intelligence company SIGS has shared a diagram on Twitter that gives an insight into the network of the Viennese assassin. It shows how closely connected the jihadist scene is across countries.
On All Souls’ Day 2020, 20-year-old Kujtim F. had opened fire in Vienna’s city centre, killing four people and injuring 23 before the police gunned him down. In the meantime, a total of 34 people are listed as suspects, ten of whom are in pre-trial detention – eXXpress reported.
An insight into the Islamist network is now provided by a diagram shared on Twitter by SIGS, a Swiss-based security and intelligence company. It shows how coordinated the jihadists from Austria, Switzerland and Germany were.
According to the report, an key figure was Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah Abdullah – Abu Walaa for short – from Iraq, who is a Salafist preacher active in Germany and is considered the highest representative of the terrorist organisation Islamic State (IS) in Germany. He is said to have recruited countless young Muslims for the IS. In 2017, the criminal trial against him was opened. At the beginning of this year, on February 24, 2021, he was found guilty of supporting and being a member of a terrorist organisation and sentenced to ten and a half years.
The Winterthur Islamists in Switzerland, who are now closely monitored by the police, also play a key role, especially the returnee from Syria, Vedad L. He stayed with the IS in 2015 and was legally sentenced to a conditional prison term after his return. Vedad’s reputation as a returnee helped him to recruit others for the IS.
From the beginning, the domestic authorities have involved foreign partner services in their investigations. In doing so, they are primarily in contact with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the law enforcement agencies in Germany and Switzerland, especially because in mid-July 2020, there was a meeting in Vienna lasting several days between four known radical Islamists from these countries and Kujtim F. and his entourage.
But the network reaches even further. Only recently, seven people were arrested by the police in Milan and other Lombard cities for allegedly supplying fake IDs to Islamist terrorists. The fundamentalists who are said to have received a fake ID also include the Vienna bomber.
https://exxpress.at/aufgedeckt-so-funktionierte-das-netzwerk-des-wiener-terroristen-kujtim-f/