BERLIN, 18 Jun: Austrian authorities said Sunday they had foiled a possible attack on Vienna\u2019s Pride parade by three young men who had allegedly sympathized with the extremist Islamic State group.
\nThe head of Austria\u2019s domestic intelligence service told reporters that the suspects, aged 14, 17 and 20, were arrested one hour before the start of Saturday\u2019s Pride parade, which was attended by around 300,000 people, public broadcaster ORF reported.
\nOmar Haijawi-Pirchner from the State Protection and Intelligence Directorate said that there was \u201cno danger for the participants of the parade at any time.\u201d
\nAustrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer expressed his gratitude to the investigators for preventing \u201ca possible Islamist attack in Vienna.\u201d
\n\u201cThis shows once again that we must never give in in the fight against radicals and extremists,\u201d Nehammer tweeted. \u201cThey are a threat to our democracy and security and must be dealt with severely.\u201d
\nVienna\u2019s mayor expressed shock.
\n\u201cThere must be no place for hate and exclusion in Vienna. Our city is colorful and cosmopolitan,\u201d Michael Ludwig said, according to Austrian news agency APA.
\nThe intelligence service had received advance knowledge of the suspects\u2019 alleged plans, kept them \u201cunder constant control,\u201d and arrested them on the orders of the St. Poelten public prosecutor\u2019s office following house searches on Saturday that uncovered various evidence, including weapons, ORF reported. AP<\/p>\n
The three suspects, Austrian citizens of Bosnian and Chechen origin whose identities were not further revealed, had radicalized online and sympathized with the Islamic State group, Haijawi-Pirchner said.
\nOne of the suspects was already known to police, he added.
\nThe trio was arrested before the start of the parade by Austria\u2019s Cobra special forces. They may have planned an attack with knives and a car, the head of the intelligence service said.
\nWhen asked whether there was any question of canceling the event, Haijawi-Pirchner said that this had \u201cof course been discussed\u201d in advance. The decision was taken not to, however, because authorities were certain the three men had no accomplices, based on well-founded and reliable investigative findings, Haijawi-Pirchner said.
\nThe organizers of the Pride parade were only informed about the events on Sunday, after the police raid had already taken place, ORF reported.
\n\u201cWe will not let the enemies of rights for LGBTQI people, democracy and an open society get us down,\u201d the parade\u2019s organizing team said, APA reported.
\nThe rights of the community have recently been \u201cincreasingly threatened by backsliding and we have to fight every day for our visibility and safety,\u201d said Ann-Sophie Otte, chairwoman of the Homosexual Initiative Vienna, according to APA. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERLIN, 18 Jun: Austrian authorities said Sunday they had foiled a possible attack on Vienna\u2019s Pride parade by three young men who had allegedly sympathized with the extremist Islamic State group. The head of Austria\u2019s domestic intelligence service told reporters that the suspects, aged 14, 17 and 20, were arrested one hour before the start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-218643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}