Austria arrested a 14-year-old on Feb. 10 on suspicion of planning a militant attack on a Vienna train station, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday, calling the suspect an Islamic State supporter who became radicalized online.
The announcement follows a knife attack in the southern town of Villach on Saturday in which a 23-year-old Syrian refugee is suspected of killing a teenager and wounding five people. That man was rapidly radicalized after watching Islamist videos on TikTok, Austrian authorities have said.
“Domestic intelligence and the police have prevented a terrorist attack in Vienna," the ministry said in a statement. “The suspect is 14 years old, an Austrian citizen with Turkish roots, and he became radicalized on the internet.”
The ministry said he had been planning an attack on the Westbahnhof station, a striking mid-20th century building that is the departure point for lines that include a private train company's service to cities such as Salzburg and Innsbruck.
A search of the suspect’s home found numerous Islamist books as well as two knives, handwritten instructions for producing explosives to be used as a detonator for a bomb, as well as material including aluminum pipes that were intended to be used for bomb-making, the ministry said.
“The Directorate for State Security and Intelligence received information that an initially unknown supporter of a terrorist organization was spreading stories and videos with Islamist ideas on several TikTok profiles,” the ministry said, describing how the investigation started.
“After an intensive investigation the DSN was able to establish the identity of the IS supporter,” it said, without naming him.
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