Graz IS trial

“No longer wants anything to do with bombs”

The 14-year-old on Tuesday in the large jury courtroom of the Graz Regional Criminal Court

(Bild: KARIN ZEHETLEITNER, Krone KREATIV)

A girl aged just 14 was arrested in Graz in May. Because she wanted to cause a bloodbath on Jakominiplatz in Graz and kill infidels with a knife. Today the teenager is on trial.

Dressed in a white sweater, blue jeans with sports shoes, wearing glasses, her long dark hair braided into plaits. This is how a 14-year-old girl enters the jury courtroom in Graz on Tuesday morning. Eight years ago, after her parents divorced, she came with her mother from Montenegro to the Styrian capital and went to school there. However, she only made one friend there.

Meeting fanatics online
She therefore spent most of her free time on her cell phone, as she told the court, constantly watching videos on TikTok, Telegram, Instagram and all other social media channels. She met a radical girl and a fanatical boy, Osman, online. Over time, ideas of the worst kind began to brew in the head of the then 13-year-old girl. Which, according to the prosecution, she even wanted to put into practice.

According to the public prosecutor's office, the girl wanted to cause a bloodbath at Jakominiplatz in Graz.

(Bild: Scherbichler Wulf)

According to the public prosecutor, the radical Islamic attitude had been smouldering in her mind for a long time. "There are chat histories in which you can read that she wanted to run away with the others and fight for IS. In another chat, she writes with a girl from Germany that she wants to carry out a knife attack on Jakominiplatz and kill infidels with knives."

Propaganda videos and bomb instructions
The fact that she was caught is thanks to contact with the German authorities. They raised the alarm in Austria after arresting the accused's chat friend. During a subsequent house search 17 days after her 14th birthday, her data carriers were confiscated and shocking material was found on them. IS propaganda videos and pictures, instructions from Osman on how to build bombs, announcements that she also wanted to blow up churches and a police station. And a video of herself, veiled, in which she swears allegiance to IS. She even paid homage to the Vienna attacker.

When the accused found out that her friend had been arrested in Germany, she became stressed that the knife attack in Graz would not happen because she would also be arrested. Instead, she fantasized about an explosives attack, which would be quicker. She received the exact instructions for building the bomb from Osman.

"Now I don't want that anymore ..."
In court, the girl appears to have reformed. It just bubbles out of her as if she wants to clear her conscience: "I feel guilty for what I wrote and did. That was five months ago, now I don't want that anymore. I don't want anything more to do with bombs. I was bullied at school because I wasn't so good at German, and then I became more and more religious. Back then, I thought everything to do with IS was right."