Country Reports on Terrorism 2008 - Austria

Sympathizers of jailed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan were believed to have been behind the October arson attacks against the Turkish consulate in Salzburg and Turkish associations in Vienna and Graz. In a separate incident, also in October, Kurdish demonstrators unsuccessfully tried to force their way onto the UN premises in Vienna. In March, a wanted PKK activist and Ocalan confidante, Ayfer Kaya, transited Austria and was subsequently arrested in Bavaria.

Austria fulfilled its obligations to freeze assets, pursuant to UN Security Council sanctions and EU Clearinghouse designations, but did not initiate any freezing actions independently. At the end of 2007, in order to implement the EU's Third Money Laundering Directive, the Austrian Parliament approved amendments to the Stock Exchange Act, the Securities Supervision Act, the Insurance Act, the Business Code, and Austrian laws governing lawyers and notaries. In the first half of 2008, it made amendments to the Gambling Act and the law governing accounting professionals. These introduced stricter regulations regarding customer identification procedures, including requiring customer identification for all transactions of more than USD 21,400 for customers without a permanent business relationship, as well as examining businesses suspected of money laundering, terrorist financing, and non-face-to-face transactions.

On August 28, Austria's Supreme Court ordered the case of Muhammad Shawqi, to be re-tried because the prosecutor did not present arguments to the jury in as clear a language as required by law. On March 13, a Vienna court had sentenced Shawqi and his wife to prison for belonging to a terrorist organization with links to al-Qa'ida and of trying to blackmail the Austrian government. Shawqi allegedly sent email threats to the Austrian and German Governments demanding they withdraw their forces from Afghanistan or face unspecified terrorist attacks.

In November, the Vienna public prosecutor suspended criminal investigations against representatives of the Palestinian Association in Austria, an organization on the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control's Specially Designated Nationals list. The prosecutor stated that he was unable to establish proof of terrorist financing or membership in a terrorist organization. In August, a Vienna court ruled that the government should unfreeze about USD eight million from a bank account belonging to the Abu Nidal terrorist group. The court determined there was insufficient evidence that the money was connected to terrorism or would be used to support terrorism. The ruling was under appeal at year's end.

Austria's Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism expressed concern about radicalization and singled out a handful of suspected extremist mosques in Vienna for monitoring. The Bureau also continued to monitor the Egyptian Islamic Jihad movement, certain radicalized converts to Islam, and suspected Afghan extremists entering Austria as asylum seekers. Media sites monitored by the BVT include the Global Islamic Media Front and the as-Sahab Foundation for Islamic Media Publications.

The Austrian government worked to implement the Pruem Treaty, which involves the exchange of DNA, fingerprint, and vehicle data between government agencies, and was designed, in part, to identify terrorism suspects.

The Government of Austria convened a number of international conferences under its Dialogue Between Cultures and Religions program, which were attended by government and religious leaders from around the world. In December, an international group of women activists founded Sisters Against Violent Extremism (SAVE), an antiterrorism organization headquartered in Vienna that seeks to develop a network of women who have been victims of terrorism.

As a country participating in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), Austria continued to comply with requirements in the VWP law related to information sharing and other law enforcement and counterterrorism cooperation. This cooperation was further enhanced by the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007.