Thursday, January 26, 2017

Austria: 800 Police carry out raids on Mosques, 17 arrested.

(Wien) Police in Austria carried out mass raids across the country targeting primarily Mosques serving Balkan Muslims (Read that as former Yugoslavia) in a bid to break the network of a preacher suspected of brainwashing teenagers to fight for ISIS. 14 people have been arrested after the huge anti-terror raids which took place across Graz and in the capital Vienna.

The raids focused on the network of Ebu Tejma a Muslim preacher from Bosnia who was jailed for 20 years last July in Graz for recruiting young fighters to the Islamic State group. Tejma is behind the "brainwashing" of dozens of people aged between 14 and 30 and enlisted a number of them to fight for Isis in Syria. Tejma fled from Bosnia to Vienna following the break-up of Yugoslavia and preached in various Austrian and southern German cities, becoming a "key figure" in pushing Isis propaganda, according to the prosecution. 
Ebu Tejma
Around 300 people have either left or have been intercepted trying to leave Austria to fight in Syria, according to the interior ministry. Around 40 have died there while some 90 have come back.

The Police have stated that the raids were not connected to last week's arrest of a suspected 17-year-old Islamist extremist in Vienna.