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Former Interior Minister and FPÖ club president Herbert Kickl used particularly drastic words and referred to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Fight Against Terrorism (BVT) as a “disaster”. The findings of the deputy governor of Vorarlberg, Johannes Rauch, carry more weight because they come from the ranks of the ÖVP’s green coalition partner. He spoke of a “pile of ruins” in the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which has been subordinate to an interior ministry run by the ÖVP for 15 years.
There was no need for SPÖ club vice president Jörg Leichtfried to threaten Interior Minister Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) with an urgent request on investigative errors in the run-up to the Vienna attack at the next ordinary meeting of the National Council. Austrians have also seen in recent days how much pressure the interior minister has been under pressure since the attack.
Monitoring aborted
Nehammer is as if buried under the “pile of broken glass.” The population is in awe of the apparent collapses of terrorist fighters this summer. The lowest point was reached on Wednesday when it emerged that BVT officials apparently stopped observing the former prisoner from Austro-North Macedonia in the summer. That happened at a stage in which the later assassin F. was warned with alarming activities in the eyes of the intelligence agencies. The protection of the constitution against neighboring intelligence services abroad was aware of this.
First was Slovakia’s warning that F. and a second man tried in vain this July to buy ammunition for an assault rifle a few kilometers behind the Austrian border. The week before, the police officers at a press conference with the Interior Minister presented this information as insufficiently clear with respect to the subsequent murderer.
In the end, however, it was surprising that nothing was done against the Islamist threat between July and the terrorist attack in Vienna on November 2. According to the information obtained so far, by mid-October it had to be clear in Vienna at the latest who the man was who wanted to buy the ammunition.
The first personal consequences were drawn
As soon as the consequences of the removal of the head of the Vienna State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the closure of two mosques had been fixed on Friday, it became even more embarrassing for terrorist fighters. As reported from Germany, there were meetings with German Islamists and Swiss sympathetic friends in Vienna under the gaze of constitutional protection officers. This raises the question of whether the attack by Nehammer’s experts could not have been prevented and whether four innocent people could have been saved.
The current status is that an independent commission of inquiry will deal with the events leading up to the attack. The interior minister tried to present this to the public as his proposal last week. Under massive pressure from the opposition in the House, there was little other option left in light of the explosive signs of obvious setbacks.
The at least dubious role of constitutional protectors in the months leading up to the terrorist attack did not just put pressure on the interior minister, even if a vote of no confidence against the majority of the ÖVP and the Greens in the National Council has failed. Reports from foreign intelligence services also undermine the ÖVP’s demands that more legal means are needed to prevent future attacks in advance.
Advance of preventive detention
Within the ÖVP, voices such as those of the Upper Austrian Governor, Thomas Stelzer, have already been voiced for the introduction of a security arrest without any concrete suspicions. That would amount to a litmus test within the Turquoise Green coalition, because the Greens would find it difficult to support such a project internally. The foreign warnings also put the ÖVP’s allegations against the judiciary after the terrorist attack into perspective. Nehammer had accused her of having released the convicted terrorist and then the Vienna bomber ahead of time. So far, neither Chancellor Sebastian Kurz nor Interior Minister Nehammer have specified which legal means the ÖVP would like to see adjusted.
Tangled in friction with the judiciary
Also contributing to the disturbing impression are the frictions that recently emerged in the Ibiza-U Commission between the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of the Interior, led by the ÖVP. It should also be remembered that the judiciary, including Justice Minister Alma Zadic (Greens), was not informed about the discovery of the Ibiza video for a long time.
Interior Minister Nehammer and the ÖVP recently denounced former Interior Minister Kickl as responsible for the disastrous state of the BVT. At the same time, however, the announced reform of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is not progressing, except for a first step that has already been taken. The current Director General of Public Safety, Franz Ruf, was brought to Vienna this winter as Director of the Salzburg State Police with precisely this assignment. Now, plans for the office renovation should be ready by the end of the year.
Furthermore, the opposition will ensure that Nehammer, as Interior Minister, will have to answer many more questions about the role of terrorist fighters before the Vienna attack. The Neos have already taken the next step and are now calling for a parliamentary “secret service committee” to be set up to investigate any failure of the authorities.
