Enlarge image
Church where the friars were attacked (December 2018)
Photo: Hans Punz / dpa
For years the police searched in vain for a perpetrator who had brought six friars into his power in Vienna and seriously injured them.
Now a DNA trail leads to a man in Germany.
Austrian investigators announced on Monday that a 49-year-old was arrested after a DNA comparison.
According to the Vienna police, the man confessed to the crime.
He testified that he acted out of hatred against the Catholic Church.
After the Christmas holidays of 2018, a then unknown perpetrator broke into a church and the offices of the brothers who run a high school in the north of Vienna.
He brought six religious between 58 and 81 years into his power, kept them tied up for hours, robbed and seriously injured them.
One of the victims was in mortal danger for several months.
The ZDF program »Aktenzeichen XY ... Unselöst« asked in vain for information about the perpetrator who had fled.
In the spring, German authorities finally informed Austrian investigators that a DNA trace from the crime scene matched a convicted man who had committed a robbery and hostage-taking in Germany in the early 2000s.
The man came to Germany with his family from Croatia as a child, reported the Vienna police.
He later became homeless and stayed in Austria again and again.
The man testified that he had read about child abuse and other allegations against the Catholic Church and that he had therefore chosen a church institution as a target, said a police spokesman for the dpa news agency.
He was arrested in Zagreb in May and is now on remand in Vienna.
zob / dpa