A total of five bomb threats were reported targeting several cities across Austria on Monday as the trial for an Islamic hate preacher began in Vienna, with claims the threats were the actions of a jihadi cell.
The bomb threats, which came from an anonymous google mail account, were sent to courts across the country in Vienna, Graz and St. Pölten, to the Jewish Community of Vienna (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien) and to a magistrate in the Austrian capital.
“It can be confirmed that in the morning hours of 27.6.2022 written threats were received against courts in Vienna, Graz and St. Pölten as well as at the IKG Vienna and the Vienna MA 56 (School Department),” the Austrian Interior Ministry said in a statement, newspaper Kronen Zeitung reports.
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The Graz court is where the trial for the alleged Islamist hate preacher began on Monday and was evacuated due to the threats, along with the other courts mentioned in the emails.
Graz has a long history of radical Islamic extremism, with the city being labelled a “stronghold” for extremists in 2017 after a report claimed that as many as half of the mosques in the city were suspected of preaching a radical form of Islam.
Mosques in the city have also been raided and shut down due to alleged ties to terrorist groups and in 2019, four Turkish-born men, including an imam, were convicted of recruiting for the Islamic State in Graz.
According to Kronen Zeitung, the emails are believed to be linked to supporters of the radical hate preacher and the newspaper was able to procure a copy of one of the letters, which reportedly wrote in broken German “Death to all Jews and Infidel in Austria!”
Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner commented on the bomb threats saying, “The threat of Islamist terrorism is the focus of the work of the state security authorities and is being combated above all in close cooperation with our European partners. We will take action against this with all consistency and all necessary means because the rule of law must not be intimidated.”
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