Vienna attacker shopped for bullets in Slovakia
Minister admits warning from neighbouring country’s intelligence agency went unheeded
THE gunman who murdered four people and injured 22 in a terror attack in Vienna was caught trying to buy ammunition in the summer, officials have admitted.
Kujtim Fejzulai succeeded in convincing the authorities that he had been deradicalised during his imprisonment for attempting to join Islamic State and was released last December.
It has now emerged that police in neighbouring Slovakia notified the Austrian authorities that the 20-year-old had been caught trying to buy ammunition in July but was turned away as he did not have a valid gun licence.
It is understood he travelled there with another man in a car registered to the mother of another known Islamist.
The disclosure came as one of Fejzulai’s victims was identified as Nexhip Vrenezi, 21, a Muslim from the same Albanian immigrant community in North Macedonia as Fejzulai. He was shot four times as he left a pub to have a cigarette. There is no indication that the men knew each other.
Slovakia was known as one of the easiest places in Europe to buy weapons but it has tightened controls since two of the gunmen who carried out the 2015 attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris obtained rifles in the country.
Karl Nehammer, the Austrian interior minister, has pledged an inquiry after he said Austria’s BVT intelligence agency had investigated the warning but it was not acted upon due to a “failure of communication”.
Fejzulai was jailed for 22 months in 2018 after being caught by police in Turkey attempting to enter Syria in order to join IS, which has claimed responsibility for the attack. But he was freed after serving only seven months of his sentence and was not placed under surveillance.
Mr Nehammer said he had “fooled the de radical is at ion programme completely” and denied allegations two covert operations against Islamic extremists in Vienna and nearby St Pölten had spurred him into action through fears his plot was about to be uncovered. But a spokesman for Derad, the Austrian deradicalisation programme, yesterday denied it had ever given Fejzulai a clean bill of health.
Police believe Fejzulai carried out the attack alone but suspect he may have had assistance in planning it.
Those being held include a man who attempted to travel to Afghanistan with Fejzulai to join IS in 2018. Two other men have been arrested in the Swiss town of Winterthur.