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Six hours after Kujtim F. murdered four people in downtown Vienna, investigators opened his apartment. They entered a largely cleared apartment – the few remaining furniture was set up as “cover for a possible shooting,” says a report on the search. There were also boxes for ammunition and scraps of duct tape that the terrorist had used to build a fake explosive belt.
Kujtim F., 20, was already dead at the time. Before he could kill more people on the night of November 2, security forces shot him. Since then, investigators have been investigating the Islamist terrorist’s environment. How did you get the murder weapons, a Kalashnikov rifle and a Tokarev pistol? Were there confidants or sympathizers? And: did you have contacts with the terrorist militia “Islamic State” (IS), which claimed the attack for itself?
The internal files of the Austrian authorities, which SPIEGEL and the Austrian daily “Der Standard” were able to inspect, provide new details about the investigation, in which the US FBI and the German Federal Criminal Police Office are also involved. And they show that the Viennese Kujtim F.’s connections with Germany were obviously closer than previously known.
According to the documents, there is a suspicion that the attack could be related to a visit by two German Islamists to the subsequent attacker. The researchers meticulously reconstructed the men’s journey. On the night of July 16, they boarded a low-cost airline Wizz Air to Vienna at 6:20 p.m. at Dortmund airport.
The 19-year-old from Osnabrück and the 25-year-old from Kassel have been classified as Islamists by the German security authorities. One of them is said to have been part of a chat group in which IS propaganda was spread. According to information from SPIEGEL, it was suspected a few years ago that the other wanted to join the IS in Syria. It is said that he kept the emblem of the terrorist militia on his cell phone. However, the proceedings were later suspended.
“Inland European Network”
According to the files, the German authorities warned the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Fight Against Terrorism (BVT) of the expected arrival of the German Islamists in July: their arrival at the Vienna-Schwechat airport was expected. around 8 pm
According to information from SPIEGEL, the German investigators really hoped the two would want to visit an Islamist from northern Germany who had been classified as a threat and who had been living in Vienna since January 2020.
Austrian officials sent an observation team to the airport and discovered that the two Vienna visitors had been picked up by Kujtim F., who would later become the attacker in Vienna. A Macedonian took the Islamists downtown in a blue Ford Focus pickup. To observe a possible “intra-European network” of Islamists with “ties to IS”, the shadow followers stayed with the group.
The two Germans stayed in the Austrian capital for five days. According to the investigation, the young man, a Kosovar from Osnabrück, spent the night with the later murderer Kujtim F. in district 22. The old man from Kassel spent a few nights in his apartment.
The two and Kujtim F. are said to have repeatedly met with other Islamists these days, in parks, restaurants or houses of prayer. One of the meetings is said to have taken place at the radical Tewhid Mosque in Vienna-Meidling, which was closed after the attack.
At the same time, two Islamists from Winterthur, Switzerland, were in the city, and from there there have been connections to the Austrian jihadist scene for years. They are said to have also met the later assassin and his visitors from Germany, and also stayed at the home of Kujtim F.
According to the investigation, the Swiss also met with another Islamist from Germany in a Viennese mosque, the North German threat who was living in Vienna at the time. The man had been sentenced to a suspended sentence in Hamburg in 2018 after unsuccessfully trying to reach Syria and join the IS terrorist militia.
Trip to the armory
For the Austrian security authorities, the meetings of the Islamists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland in those July days are not a coincidence. Just one day after Kujtim FS guests left Kassel and Osnabrück, the last murderer went to Slovakia. At the “Luxury Guns” weapons store on the outskirts of Bratislava, he tried to buy ammunition for a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
There is a suspicion that Kujtim F’s meeting with the Germans immediately before the trip to the weapons shop “could have something to do with the attacks,” according to Austrian investigation documents.
The German researchers are more cautious with their assessment. A week ago, they searched the homes of the attacker’s acquaintances in Germany and confiscated cell phones and other electronic data carriers. However, the Federal Attorney General did not initially list them as defendants.
