A 21-year-old Austrian was sentenced to two years in prison, partly suspended. He was found guilty under the Prohibition Act for inciting punishable acts, as well as for criminal association and incitement. He is also said to have been a member of the international neo-Nazi group “Feuerkrieg Division.”
As a member of the right-wing terrorist group “Feuerkrieg Division,” he discussed attack plans, shared antisemitic and racist content, and was heavily involved with weapons. Simultaneously, he served as a soldier in the Austrian Federal Army and was responsible for guarding Jewish institutions in Leopoldstadt.
Authorities found in his apartment firearms, knives, ammunition, gas masks, and Nazi memorabilia, including a military ID card and image files glorifying Nazis and Hitler. His search history was also revealing. He meticulously searched for information on right-wing terrorist assassins, showing particular interest in the Christchurch attacker who killed 51 people in two New Zealand mosques.
On 11 October 2022, the young man looked up the Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG) and the address of the Stadttempel. During an interrogation, he claimed he was working there for the Federal Army. According to the Federal Army, he was indeed responsible for monitoring facilities in the 2nd district, not the 1st, where the Stadttempel is located. However, there is no evidence of concrete attack plans.
Nevertheless, the defendant—who was also accused of Holocaust denial—monitored various Jewish institutions as part of his Federal Army duties.
The “Feuerkrieg Division” emerged as a subgroup of the “Atomwaffen Division,” which first appeared in the USA in 2015. At the time, it was considered one of the “most dangerous and violent groups of our time,” as the prosecutor stated at the trial. The group’s goal was to provoke a “worldwide race war.”
Both groups glorified mass murderers and called for the murder of minorities. The “Feuerkrieg Division” consisted of around 50 to 70 members and was strongly networked, primarily in Europe. According to the prosecutor, the group was “ideologically very solid” and shared text and image material that was “clearly antisemitic, racist, glorified Nazis, and glorified violence.”
