The 44-year-old convict has a turbulent political past. In addition to his function as Social Democratic SPÖ substitute community councillor, he was youth officer of the Islamic religious community Linz (IRG). The man is also active in the ALIF (Austria Linz Islamic Federation), which is considered “nationalistic and fundamentalistic” by the security authorities. The convicted terrorist with Turkish roots has Austrian citizenship. When the scandal arose in 2017, the man was still a teacher of religion in Wels. State school board president Enzenhofer removed him from the teaching profession and imposed a ban on teaching. The SPÖ also dissociated itself from him “by mutual agreement” in August 2017. The accusations were serious; the courts had been ruling against the accused since 2018. By publishing a video in which the Islamist jihad was praised, he would have fulfilled the requirements of membership in a terrorist organisation as well as membership in a criminal organisation. The film was publicly available on the political official’s Facebook profile from 2013 to 2017, with a supporting commentary. The video shows flags of the Islamic state, glorified by the then IS leader Omar Al Baghdadi. The text literally said “My brother, what’s the matter with you that you don’t want to go to war…””Brother” is an interesting keyword in this context, because the brother of the legally convicted was active in the Austrian People’s Party ÖVP at the same time. He was also excluded from the party. The case shows well how radically Islamist persons in Austria engage in democratic parties. The parties did not examine the background of the men, nor did they look more closely at their public appearances and statements. At the time, commentators in the social media speculated that it was probably more important for the parties to fulfil a certain quota of migrants than to question the democratic suitability of their functionaries. An accusation that can hardly be denied when one considers that the IS supporters’ video was publicly shown for four years.It is noteworthy that the leftist newspaper Standard called the man the “head of an Islamist association. Last Wednesday, the case of the ex-religion teacher was dealt with once again before the Higher Regional Court. The court had to decide on the sentence, the facts had – as explained above – already been legally decided.Surprisingly, the court increased the prison sentence by two. Instead of the six months in the first instance, this time the judges sentenced to twelve months. In view of the fact that the maximum sentence prescribed by law is 10 years’ imprisonment, the verdict was still rather lenient. The Islamic associations for which the man was active (or possibly is still active today) have never distanced themselves from him. As the newspaper Volksblatt aktuell reports, the heads of the IRG and the ALIF visited the convicted man a few days before the trial and provocatively published photos of the meeting. 

wochenblick.at/ex-spoe-politiker-wegen-mitgliedschaft-in-terror-vereinigung-verurteilt/