Dutch investigators tipped off the Austrian law enforcement and provided them with the online chat logs. According to authorities the youngsters engaged in a radical chat group, declaring that they were in the “final phase of making explosives” and that they had access to guns, swords and knives. They already had existing criminal records in Austria. The 16-year-old reportedly said in the group chat that he is “angry with the West” and they must “re-establish the caliphate.” He admitted that they planned to attack the middle school, which his 15-year-old friend attended. Based on their group chat history, they were not keen on carrying out “boring knife attacks” and wanted to use explosives to kill as many people as possible. 

Another one of their friends admittedly tried to steal his father’s submachine gun to use in the attack. The boys had been saving up to buy their own guns. They claimed that God would forgive them because “Killing Christians takes us to paradise.”

The 15-year-old also set fire to a university building in Bruck in May 2022 whilst the school was closed.

The court sentenced the defendants to two years in prison for “criminal conspiracy” but they are expected to only serve eight months behind bars. They were also sentenced to probation, deradicalization training and anti-violence training. The maximum penalty that juveniles in Austria can face is up to five years.

According to Raymond Ibrahim – a conservative American, who is a Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum: “Austria appears to be sitting on a time bomb regarding Islamic extremism. Even though authorities managed to thwart what could have been a tragic massacre of schoolchildren — as they thwarted an earlier one in 2020 — Muslim hostility in Austria continues to grow, suggesting that it might only be a matter of time before a severe terrorist attack or worse overwhelms that nation.. Along with generic Muslim criminality in Austria seems to be, sadly, an ideologically-driven hatred for ‘disbelievers’ and especially Christians and Jews. There are now more Muslim students than Catholics in the schools of Austrian cities, including Vienna, the capital, and Linz.” 

Source: https://www.christianpost.com/