VIENNA, AUSTRIA: Another Terrorist Released Early, Another Deadly Terror Attack
After being captured while trying to join the Islamic State, Kujtim Fejzulai, a dual citizen of Austria and North Macedonia, was sentenced to 22 months in prison. However, after showing a positive attitude and completing Muslim deradicalization programs, he was released early. Once released, he assembled a variety of weapons and launched a terrorist attack in Vienna (where he was born), killing four and insuring fourteen others. Fejzulai was killed by police. David Wood discusses the terror attack and its connection to the Quran and the Islamic doctrines of jihad and taqiyya.
BY PATRICK DUNLEAVY
SEE: https://www.investigativeproject.org/8615/another-terrorist-released-early-another-deadly;
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
The flawed policy of releasing convicted terrorists before they have completed their sentences has once again struck a lethal blow. This time it happened in the Austrian capital of Vienna.
A man armed with a handgun, assault rifle, and machete attacked innocent civilians Monday outside the Seitenstettengasse synagogue, killing four and wounding several others including a police officer responding to the incident. Witnesses said they heard the man shouting "Allahu Akbar" during the attack.
The gunman was killed by responding officers within 10 minutes of the attack. Authorities are now investigating whether this was part of a larger terror network or a lone wolf acting on his own. The terrorist was identified as Kujtim Fejzulai, a 20-year-old with dual citizenship in Austria and Northern Macedonia.
Following the identification, the descriptive phrase "was previously known ..." was once again uttered by investigators. Fejzulai had been convicted of providing material support for a terrorist organization following his capture in Syria when attempting to join ISIS. He was sentenced in April 2019 to 22 months in prison. However, because of his age and Austria's lenient policies regarding youthful offenders, he was released in December having served just 8 months of his original sentence.
"He [Fejzulai] was young and enjoyed the privileges of the laws pertaining to minors," said Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer, explaining why Fejzulai was released early from prison.
Fejzulai "managed to deceive the judicial system's deradicalization program" to secure his release," Nehammer said.
Fejzulai managed to fool others regarding his radicalization. His attorney, Nikolaus Rast, said he saw his client as "completely harmless" after meeting in the 2019 case. Rast seemed to believe Fejzulai's conversion to a radical form of Islam was the result of some unfortunate coincidence of fate.
"He was a young man who was searching for his place in society, who apparently went to the wrong mosque, [and]ended up in the wrong circles," Rast said.
As ridiculous as that comment sounds, it does recognize that mosques, where radical imams are free to coax the vulnerable to the glories of jihad, can play an important role in the radicalization process.
It's not the first time.
In 1994, Rashid Baz, a New York City cab driver, attended the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge mosque. While there, Baz listened to a fiery anti-Semitic sermon calling for the death of Jews, preached by one of the Imams. Following that experience, Baz attacked a van full of Orthodox Jewish students on the Brooklyn Bridge with automatic weapons, killing 16-year-old Ari Halberstam and wounding several others.
London's Finsbury mosque offers another example of this phenomenon. It was there a former ex-con named Richard Reid heard the call for jihad by radical imams such as Abu Hamza, and responded in 2001 by placing an explosive device in his footwear and attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami.
Social media is another catalyst in the radicalization process.
Just before waging the Vienna attack, Kujtim Fejzulai posted a photo of himself holding a machete, a handgun, and an AK-47 on Instagram while pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.
This was not Fejzulai's first foray into social media. Officials had been monitoring him after he posted extremist missives on the internet prior to his 2019 conviction, and also after his December prison release, Nehammer said. He did not say why Fejzulai was not returned to prison after his internet activity was discovered. Perhaps that was not considered a violation of Fejzulai's post-release guidelines.
Austrian security officials were notified in July by Slovakia's intelligence services that Fejzulai had attempted to purchase ammunition there. That information was never acted upon.
Had it been, perhaps four innocent people would still be alive.
Nehammer is now calling for an immediate examination of the effectiveness of Austria's de-radicalization program. We would hope that the examination results in changes, such as mandates for training staff to see through the "jail wise" cons used by incarcerated Islamic terrorists to feign rehabilitation, as Fejzulai did. We would also hope that stringent post-release conditions would be placed on every paroled terrorist.
A change in the laws governing early release of terrorists would also be a step in the right direction. The UK took that important step earlier this year after two terrorist attacks by jihadists released early from prison.
Both Usman Khan and Sudesh Amman were serving time in UK prisons for terror related crimes when they were granted early release under the UK's older sentencing laws. After their release, they were separately killed by police as they mounted terror attacks, despite being under police surveillance. Khan stabbed at least two individuals to death on the London Bridge in November 2019; Amman stabbed two people in Streatham, London, in February 2020.
Waiting until another terror attack occurs before considering changes to counter terrorism strategies is a dangerous policy. Rehabilitation and de-radicalization programs are well-intentioned goals; however, they cannot be the primary goal in combating radical Islamic terrorism.
"Protecting the public is Government's first duty..." as the UK's Justice Secretary Robert Buckland reminded us in February.
And unless immediate security measures are taken to stop the prison door from opening early for convicted terrorists, more violent acts like these will continue. And that is unacceptable.
IPT Senior Fellow Patrick Dunleavy is the former Deputy Inspector General for New York State Department of Corrections and author of The Fertile Soil of Jihad. He currently lectures a class on terrorism for the United States Air Force's Special Operations School.
IPT Senior Analyst and Editor Cynthia Dachowitz contributed to this report.
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Austria: All 14 of those detained in connection with Vienna jihad massacre are Muslim migrants
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Wait, there’s more.
Tashfeen Malik, one of the San Bernardino jihad mass murderers, passed five separate background checks at five different U.S. agencies. The U.S. government policy still (we may hope President Trump will change this soon) doesn’t even recognize the existence of Islamic jihad; how can officials possibly vet for it.
More of what Bishop Malone doesn’t mention: Somali Muslim migrant Mohammad Barry in February 2016 stabbed multiple patrons at a restaurant owned by an Israeli Arab Christian; Ahmad Khan Rahami, an Afghan Muslim migrant, in September 2016 set off bombs in New York City and New Jersey; Arcan Cetin, a Turkish Muslim migrant, in September 2016 murdered five people in a mall in Burlington, Washington; Dahir Adan, another Somali Muslim migrant, in October 2016 stabbed mall shoppers in St. Cloud while screaming “Allahu akbar”; and Abdul Razak Artan, yet another Somali Muslim migrant, in November 2016 injured nine people with car and knife attacks at Ohio State University. 72 jihad terrorists have come to the U.S. from the countries listed in Trump’s immigration ban.
What’s more, all of the jihadis who murdered 130 people in Paris in November 2015 had just entered Europe as refugees. In February 2015, the Islamic State boasted it would soon flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees. The Lebanese Education Minister said in September 2015 that there were 20,000 jihadis among the refugees in camps in his country. On May 10, 2016, Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s DGSI internal intelligence agency, said that the Islamic State was using migrant routes through the Balkans to get jihadis into Europe.
As President, Joe Biden has pledged he will increase “refugee” intake by 700%. No vetting of the new arrivals will be done; that would be “Islamophobic.” What could possibly go wrong?
“Austrian Interior Minister: All Those Held in Connection to Vienna Attack Have Migration Background,” Sputnik News, November 4, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Four people were killed and more than a dozen injured, several of them critically, in Monday’s attack in the Austrian capital. The 20-year-old perpetrator was shot and killed by police. Authorities have classified the attack as a terrorist incident motivated by Islamist extremism.
All those detained in connection with Monday’s terror attack in the centre of Vienna have a migrant background, and some are foreign nationals, Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer has said.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Nehammer also indicated that the arrested people were between the ages of 18 and 28, and are under investigation for suspected involvement in a terrorist organisation. Police earlier reported that 14 people had been detained in Austria after raids at 18 separate locations.
The interior minister added that more than a terabyte of video evidence of the attacks from eyewitnesses confirmed the lone attacker theory to be true, and showed the brutality and cruelty with which they took place.
Nehammer also reported that Slovak officials had informed their Austrian neighbours of ammunition possibly being bought by the terror suspect inside Slovakia, but “something went wrong” and that an “apparent miscommunication” took place between Austrian agencies after the intelligence was received.
“In the past few hours information has come to light that some time before the terror attack, Slovakian intelligence informed BVT [Austrian intelligence] about the attacker. The information was that he wanted to get ammunition,” Nehammer said.
The minister blamed his predecessor Herbert Kickl for weakening the capabilities of Austria’s domestic intelligence service and causing it “lasting damage”.
Nehammer also repeated that the attacker had fooled Austria’s deradicalisation programme “perfectly”, leading to his early release from custody on terrorism-related charges late last year….