Austria expands Brotherhood law to right-wing organizations
Austria has expanded the law banning extremist organizations symbols to include far-right organizations that join Muslim Brotherhood figures already banned since 2019.
This came within the framework of the Austrian parliament’s passage yesterday of a new package of anti-terrorism legislation, with broad support from the Greens parties “left”, the people “center right”, the Democratic Socialist “center left”, and the Liberal Free Party “center right”.
The People’s Freedom Party opposed the package because it was “not enough to confront terrorism in the country” after the deadly Vienna attack months ago, according to the party.
Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said that the new legislation “allows tougher penalties for extremist-incubating environments and facilitates their surveillance, as well as monitoring hate speech, religious extremism and the exploitation of the Internet for these purposes.”
He said that the parliament had approved a mandatory wearing of the electronic bracelet in case of conditional release for terrorism convicts, and the new law would create a criminal offense with religious motivations.
The package of laws passed by the Austrian Parliament is aimed at countering environments and terrorist incubators that incite extremism and hatred both in the virtual world and in practice.
In addition, the new counter-terrorism package included the expansion of the Terrorist and Extremist Organizations Symbols Act, which came into force in its expanded form in March 2019 and aims to restrict the emergence of terrorist and extremist organizations in the public sphere in the country.
According to the new anti-terrorism package, the far-right Identity Movement and the far-right Austrian Movement have joined the regulations targeted by the Code Ban Act.
Organizations called by law
Prior to this expansion, the law clearly prohibited the symbols of each of the following organizations: ISIS, the Brotherhood, al Qaeda, Turkish gray wolves, the Kurdistan Workers Party, Hamas, the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, and the Liberation Party.
While Brotherhood figures have been on the ban list since the law came into force on 1 March 2019, Hezbollah’s political wing was its newest member weeks before yesterday’s expansion.
Last March, Al-Ain News singled out a document sent to Parliament by Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer, stating that the law banning slogans and symbols of terrorist organizations had been a major success in the past two years.
The document, dated 2 March 2021, continued that “the government is moving to expand the code law as announced in the new anti-terrorism package, which was “adopted by the parliament yesterday,” adding that the law greatly helps to limit the appearance of these organizations and their slogans in the country.
For example, the Code Ban Act has been a major success in preventing the use of Brotherhood terrorist slogans and symbols in Austria over the past two years.
According to the document, Austrian authorities in no region of the country recorded the use of Brotherhood slogans and symbols in 2020.
In February 2020, almost a year after the code ban came into force, Christoph Ploetzel, a spokesman for the Austrian Interior Ministry, told Al Ain News: “In total, we detected 71 violations of the law banning Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah symbols and Turkish gray wolves during the year of the law’s implementation.”
Ploetzel refused to specify the circumstances of these violations, but said that “the Interior Ministry is determined to apply the law strictly to violators.”
“The ministry is closely monitoring the situation in Austria as a whole and is monitoring violations at the earliest,” he said.
According to observers, the ban on symbols was a blow to the Muslim Brotherhood and a spark of fear among its members, which was evident in their refusal to use the organization’s slogans in the public sphere in Austria.
The Brotherhood has been dealt heavy blows in Austria over the past two years, from the inclusion of its slogans in the law banning symbols of terrorist organizations, to the November 9 raids targeting associations and individuals linked to the group.
The Public Prosecution in Austria is continuing its investigations into the Muslim Brotherhood file before the case is referred to the judiciary in the first half of next year, observers expect.
