The Vienna court sentenced on the night of Thursday February 2 to life imprisonment two alleged accomplices of the author of the jihadist attack in Vienna in 2020, shot dead by the police on the evening of the assault.
On November 2, 2020, 20-year-old Kujtim Fejzulai killed four bystanders and injured 23 others in the heart of the Austrian capital, spreading panic in this usually very safe country of 9 million people.
Before taking action, this Austrian had recorded a message of allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group, which had claimed responsibility for the attack.
Two years later, four Austrians, a Kosovar and a Chechen, now aged 22 to 32, found themselves in the dock.
After a trial lasting several months and a jury deliberation lasting a dozen hours, the verdict fell late at night.
Two of them were found guilty of
"facilitating the execution of the crimes"
.
They remained impassive at the statement of the judgment, noted an AFP journalist.
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They are accused of having actively supported and encouraged the assailant in his disastrous project, by providing him with logistical aid or even by preparing arms and ammunition.
Two others were sentenced for the same offenses but received lighter sentences (19 to 20 years in prison), because one was under 21 at the time of the attack and the other partially admitted his responsibility.
Finally, the last two were acquitted of the main charges.
But two years in prison, including eight months, were pronounced against them for belonging to the IS group.
After the tragedy, the Austrian government had been strongly criticized for its failures in monitoring the assailant.
Kujtim Fejzulai, whose parents were from North Macedonia, was convicted in 2018 of trying to join IS in Syria.
The intelligence services had been informed of his attempt to buy weapons after his release from prison and of contacts he had had with jihadists from neighboring countries, but they had not detected his dangerousness.
In response, Austria in 2021 introduced electronic monitoring for released jihadists and created a separate criminal offense to convict crimes motivated by
“religious extremism”.
