From Criminals To Terrorists And Back? Quarterly Report: Austria, vol. 2

The second and final report on the Austrian‘ crime-terror nexus analysed all sixteen profiles of individuals arrested in 2015 for terrorist offences, predominantly for their membership in a terrorist organisation. None of them was killed, expelled, or remain fugitives and each of them was convicted by December 2018. Interestingly, only two out of 16 individuals were born on EU territory; and thus, has Austrian citizenship. The others are citizens of Russia (10), Syria (3), and Algeria (1) respectively. In this particular sample, we see a clear pattern between being born in the land of “another jihad” (Chechnya) or living in a country where an armed conflict or a civil war occurred respectively and later becoming a terrorist participant.

The study also briefly touches upon the phenomenon of foreign fighters and radicalisation to get a more well-rounded picture of the state of Austrian terrorism in 2015. Please read the full report prepared by Jörg Peschak and Daniela Pisoiu.