Just three months after his release from prison, a Viennese schoolboy (17) once again acted as a supporter of the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) while still on probation. Now the incorrigible teenager is being tried again.
The Vienna public prosecutor’s office has brought charges against a 17-year-old IS supporter for terrorist organisation and attempted grievous bodily harm. He will be tried from November 27. The boy had only been sentenced to 21 months’ partial imprisonment by the same court at the end of January 2023. He had acted as a propagandist for the radical Islamist terror militia “Islamic State” (IS).
Since October 2021, the boy had been showing IS videos with execution and battle scenes to classmates at his school. He carved the IS lettering on a classmate’s textbook with a knife. He shared relevant propaganda material on his mobile phone and condoned the terrorist attack in Vienna by declaring in a relevant chat group that he hoped the attacker would be “accepted by Allah”. On the 12th of November 2021, there was even a police operation at the boy’s school. He had marched into the classroom with a 24-centimetre-long butterfly knife, opened it up and presented it to his classmates.
Shortly after the trial at the beginning of the year, in which a third of the sentence of seven months was handed down to him unconditionally, the young man was released with credit for his pre-trial detention. He had been in prison since the beginning of August 2022 due to the risk of committing an offence after he had repeatedly gone for walks with a machete with the IS lettering clearly visible on it in the weeks before his arrest. He had also sprayed “Islamic State” and the IS banner in huge letters on a pillar of the Brigittenau bridge.
In its verdict, the court ordered the young IS supporter to undergo a deradicalisation programme. Although the 17-year-old agreed to this, he obviously did not keep his word. According to the new indictment, which has now become legally binding, he joined forces with an IS supporter who was one year older in April – just three months after his conviction – to once again distribute relevant propaganda material, including promotional brochures for IS and recruitment videos.
Unbelehrbar: Wiener Schüler (17) schon wieder als IS-Terrorist vor Gericht | Exxpress