VIENNA — Heavily armed SWAT teams supported by hundreds of other officers detained 14 people suspected of having ties to the Islamic State group in early-morning raids on Thursday, Austrian officials said.
VIENNA — Heavily armed SWAT teams supported by hundreds of other officers detained 14 people suspected of having ties to the Islamic State group in early-morning raids on Thursday, Austrian officials said.
An earlier statement from the public prosecutor’s office in Graz said there were eight arrests in twin operations there and in Vienna involving 800 police. But Justice Ministry official Christian Pilnacek later said the discrepancy was between the eight arrest warrants issued and the 14 people — 11 men and three women — actually detained.
Besides suspected links to the Islamic State group, Pilnacek said those detained were being investigated for attempts to try to set up a “parallel society … an attempt to create a kind of theocracy in Austria.”
Two of the 12 locations raided were Muslim social centers also used as mosques, Pilnacek said.
The people arrested also are suspected of recruiting around 40 people to fight for Islamic extremist groups in the Mideast, he said.
The police sweep came less than a week after police in Vienna detained a 17-year-old they describe as belonging to “radical Salafist” circles who they said has confessed to experimenting with building a bomb.
But the prosecutor’s statement said Thursday’s operation had been planned for “a longer time,” suggesting no immediate link.