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A Syrian man accused of carrying out a deadly knife attack in Austria has admitted committing terror-related offences, prosecutors said on Monday.
The 23-year-old suspect was arrested in February in the southern Austrian city of Villach, after an attack that left a 14-year-old boy dead and five others wounded. Authorities have described the incident as an “Islamist attack with Islamic State connections.”
According to prosecutors, the suspect has confessed to “committing terrorist offences,” including murder. In a statement, they said he “acted with the intention of seriously intimidating the civilian population which does not follow the goals of the terrorist organisation Islamic State.”
He had been radicalised on the internet in a short space of time, and an ISIS flag was found in his apartment.
Prosecutors said the man faces a possible sentence of 20 years in prison or life imprisonment if convicted. No date has yet been set for his court hearing.
The last similar, jihadist attack in Austria was carried out in 2020, when a convicted ISIS sympathiser went on a shooting rampage in central Vienna, killing four.
Austria is facing “high-risk threats” of Islamist terrorism, according to the head of the Central European country’s domestic intelligence agency. On February 19th, Austrian authorities announced that they had arrested a 14-year-old boy with Turkish roots, who was planning to carry out an attack on one of Vienna’s largest train stations, the Westbahnhof.
The boy had been radicalised on the internet and had shared posts and videos with Islamic extremist content—including an excerpt from the 2015 Islamist terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo—on several TikTok profiles.
