Austria convicts teen on ‘terror’ charges
14 YEAR OLD IN ‘PLAYSTATION’ TERRORISM CASE GETS 2 YEARS
A14-year-old boy from Austria who downloaded bombmaking plans onto his Play Station games console was sentenced to a two-year jail term yesterday after pleading guilty to terrorism charges, a court spokeswoman said.
As well as researching how to build a bomb, the boy made contact with militants supporting Daesh, prosecutors said ahead of the trial.
The schoolboy, named only as Mertkan G., was also found guilty of belonging to a “terrorist” organisation and given an additional suspended jail sentence of 16 months by a court in his hometown of Sankt-Poelten.
According to the charge sheet, the teenager, who emigrated from Turkey in 2007, wanted to carry out the attack before travelling to join “holy war” in Syria alongside Daesh.
Police had said at the time of his arrest in October 2014 that the boy made “concrete enquiries about buying ingredients” for a bomb and “planned to explode the devices in public places, such as the Vienna Westbahnhof,” a major train station.
‘Playing with the idea’
His lawyer Rudolf Mayer had said his client — who turns 15 in the coming days — had only been “playing with the idea” of making a bomb. He has been in custody since January. Unconfirmed press reports said that Daesh had offered to pay him €25,000 (Dh100,077 or $27,250) if he managed to carry out the attack.
Like other European countries, Austria has seen a steady flow of people leaving or attempting to leave the country in order to join Daesh militants in Syria and Iraq.
According to the Austrian interior ministry, more than 200 have done so, including some women and minors. Around 70 have since returned, several of whom are in custody awaiting trial.
He had been briefly placed in investigative custody in October on suspicion of terrorism-related activity, before being conditionally released. He was detained for a second time in January.