In court, two Muslim teens in Austria testified that they planned to kill as many Christian people as possible in an attack on a school that one of them attended.
The boys, ages 15 and 16 from Bruck an der Mur, who already have existing criminal records, testified in Leoben Regional Court on July 16 to answer for charges of being part of a terrorist organization and criminal organization, according to regional Austrian news outlets.
Authorities claim that the teens were members of a radical chat group and that they were in the “final phase of making explosives” and had access to weapons, swords, and knives, according to the newspaper Kleine Zeitung.
The 16-year-old is an Austrian apprentice in the automotive industry, while the 15-year-old is of Chechen ancestry. In the group conversation, the 16-year-old reportedly stated that he is “angry with the West” and that they must “re-establish the caliphate.” When questioned about the talks, the accused allegedly admitted that they planned to target the 15-year-old’s middle school in the Styrian town of Bruck a der Mur.
They claimed they wanted to “shoot all the Christians in the class!” Additionally, the teens had a friend who tried and failed to obtain his father’s submachine gun for the teens to use. The teens were also reportedly saving up to buy their own guns.
The boys admitted they would have surrendered if police intervened and stressed that God would forgive them because “Killing Christians takes us to paradise.”
Austria’s largest newspaper, Kronen Zeitung, reports that the teens made it clear on their platforms that they weren’t interested in carrying out “boring knife attacks” and wanted to use explosives to kill as many people as possible.
Austrian law enforcement was tipped off about the plans by Dutch investigators who sent over the online chat logs.
The court sentenced both boys to two years in prison for “criminal conspiracy” but they are expected to only serve roughly eight months behind bars.
According to the broadcast outlet ORF Steiermark, the court also sentenced the boys to probation, deradicalization training and anti-violence training. The maximum penalty that juveniles in Austria can face is up to five years behind bars.
Kleine Zeitung reports that the father of the 16-year-old was surprised by the allegations against his son, while the 15-year-old’s mother didn’t appear phased by the verdict.
A Kronen Zeitung report detailed that the 15-year-old also set fire to a university building in Bruck in May 2022 while the school was closed.
Raymond Ibrahim, the distinguished senior shillman fellow at the Gatestone Institute think tank, recently wrote that “Austria appears to be sitting on a time bomb” regarding Islamic extremism.
“Even though authorities managed to thwart what could have been a tragic massacre of schoolchildren — as they thwarted an earlier one in 2020 — Muslim hostility in Austria continues to grow, suggesting that it might only be a matter of time before a severe terrorist attack or worse overwhelms that nation,” Ibrahim wrote.
“Along with generic Muslim criminality in Austria seems to be, sadly, an ideologically-driven hatred for ‘disbelievers’ and especially Christians and Jews,” he added.
“There are now more Muslim students than Catholics in the schools of Austrian cities, including Vienna, the capital, and Linz.”