Patterns of Global Terrorism 1999 - Austria
- Author: Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism
- Document source:
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Date:
1 April 2000
As with many west European countries, Austria suffered a Kurdish backlash in the aftermath of the arrest of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in Kenya on 16 February. Kurdish demonstrators almost immediately occupied the Greek and Kenyan Embassies in Vienna, vacating the facilities peacefully the following day. Kurds also held largely peaceful protest rallies in front of the US chancery and at numerous other locations across the country. PKK followers subsequently refrained from violence, focusing instead on rebuilding strained relations with the Austrian Government and lobbying for Ankara to spare Ocalan's life. In addition to the PKK, the Kurdish National Liberation Front – a PKK front organization – continued to operate an office in Vienna.
In the fight against domestic terrorism, an Austrian court in March sentenced Styrian-born Franz Fuchs to life imprisonment for carrying out a deadly letter-bomb campaign from 1993 to 1997 that killed four members of the Roma minority in Burgenland Province and injured 15 persons in Austria and Germany. Jurors unanimously found that Fuchs was the sole member of the fictitious "Bajuvarian Liberation Army" on whose behalf Fuchs had claimed to act.
In a shootout in Vienna in mid-September, Austrian police killed suspected German Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist Horst Ludwig-Mayer. Authorities arrested his accomplice, Andrea Klump, and on 23 December extradited her to Germany to face charges in connection with membership in the outlawed RAF, possible complicity in an attack against the chairman of the Deutsche Bank, and involvement in an attack against a NATO installation in Spain in 1988.
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