Austria arrests 30 in Muslim Brotherhood crackdown
Austrian police arrested 30 people yesterday in more than 60 raids against groups suspected of operating on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
The raids took place at flats, houses, businesses and other premises.
“The suspicion is of belonging to a terrorist organisation, financing terrorism, association against the state, criminal organisation and money laundering,” the prosecutor’s office in the southern city of Graz said.
The operation was launched in four of Austria’s nine provinces: Styria, of which Graz is the capital, Carinthia, Vienna and Lower Austria.
More than 900 police were involved and a trove of documents, mobile phones and computers were seized for analysis.
Franz Ruf, the director general of Public Security in Graz, said officials had conducted 21,000 hours of surveillance.
The raids happened less than a week after a major terrorist incident in Vienna that was claimed by ISIS, but the two investigations are not linked.
Austria’s Interior Minister Karl Nehammer and the lead counter-extremism minister Susanne Raab said they were focusing on the ideological threats posed by the organisations.
Hamas was founded as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and is designated a terrorist organisation by the US and EU.
The Muslim Brotherhood is not on the bloc’s terrorism blacklist, but prosecutors said they were investigating links between the two organisations.
Austrian courts have accepted arguments that Muslim Brotherhood activities constitute a terrorist threat and are grounds for criminal prosecution.
The Graz prosecutors said the case involved investigations into the activities of 70 people.
According to a report by George Washington University scholar Lorenzo Vidino, Austria is one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s strongholds in Europe.
“Historically, the Egyptians and Syrians have been the most active Brotherhood branches in Austria; however, the country has seen the presence of activists from other national branches of the movement,” the report said.