DPA/AFP
Vienna
A teenage boy was sentenced to eight months behind bars in Austria for his plans to join Islamic State (IS) extremists in Syria, and to detonate a bomb in Vienna, a court in St Poelten ruled yesterday.
The Turkish-born 14-year-old confessed that he had contacted IS liaisons in Vienna last year and had promised them that he would carry out an attack before leaving for Syria.
His school had noticed that the boy had become radicalised and contacted police, who detained him in October.
He had collected online manuals for making explosives, and considering attacking the Westbahnhof, a major Vienna train station, according to investigators.
He had also tried to recruit a 12-year-old friend.
Police found violent images and IS propaganda on the teen’s computer, mobile phone and Playstation.
The public prosecutor told the court that the defendant expressed “no feelings of guilt”.
The baby-faced teenager appeared in court in a grey hooded top.
He listened in silence to opening comments from the prosecution and his attorney before media were ejected.
The authorities asked the media not to name the boy because of his age.
The jury found the defendant guilty of joining a terrorist organisation and of having obtained instructions to carrying out a terrorist act.
He was sentenced to eight months in prison, of which he has already served five months in pre-trial detention.
He will be put on probation afterwards and could go to prison for another 16 months if he breaks probation rules.
“You can be sure that the regional police intelligence authority will remain vigilant,” the judge said.
The boy’s lawyer Rudolf Mayer said that his client – who he said grew up without a father” and who turns 15 in the coming days – had only been “playing with the idea” of making a bomb.
Placed in a special school for troubled children where “prospects for professional development are almost inexistent”, the boy had “looked for recognition, to belong to something”, Mayer told the court.
“Imagine the power of propaganda that says to young people who feel they are living an empty existence: ‘You can do something good, and get money and women’,” he said.
The Austrian government has implemented a package of measures intended to stop people planning to travel abroad to fight, including a new rule that children and youths need the consent of their parents for trips outside the European Union.
The government has also installed a hotline for concerned parents, and has stepped up co-operation with Muslim organisations, schools and prisons to prevent radicalisation.
Half of the foreign fighters in Austria belong to the Chechen expatriate community, while men with roots in former Yugoslav countries make up another major group, according to the interior ministry.
In common with other European countries, Austria has seen a steady flow of people leaving or attempting to leave the country in order to join IS.
According to the Austrian interior ministry, more than 200 have done so, including some women and minors.
One of those who wanted to go was a 16-year-old girl who went on trial separately in Vienna yesterday, but was acquitted on charges of belonging to a “terrorist” organisation.
The girl, wearing an Islamic dress, told the court that she converted to Islam in 2014 because it was “for me the most beautiful religion” and because in Christianity “children get raped”, the Austria Press Agency reported.
Last year she got to know on the Internet Jusip D., an 18-year-old of Chechen origin who wanted to join IS.
The two got married under Islamic law and the next day he left for Syria.
She wanted to follow him but her mother prevented her from leaving and took away her passport.
In February she tried again to leave, saving up €300 for a bus ticket to Istanbul, but was arrested the day before her intended departure.
She told the court that she believes her husband has been killed fighting in Syria.
“When you love each other then you want to be with your husband. I imagined I could live as a housewife,” she said, doing “cooking and cleaning”.
“In Austria I get insulted and spat at when I go out veiled,” she said. The killing of non-Muslims is “not good at all. But it is an Islamic state and they are brothers in Islam”.
She said she plans to move to an Islamic country “when I am an adult”.
The 14-year-old entering the courtroom prior to the start of his trial yesterday, in St Poelten, Austria.
