On November 2, 2020, All Souls Day, Austria’s first Islamist terrorist attack took place in Vienna. One man killed 4 people and wounded another 22 people, some of them life-threatening. It was the worst terrorist attack in our country’s history.
The first research has shown that this attack can be traced back to a traitor within the Austrian secret service. That evening of November 2nd was the eve of the Austrian “lockdown” in the wake of the corona pandemic. That night, when the general curfew was supposed to begin at midnight, a raid was planned against the Islamist scene in Austria. At least one of those affected was told about this action, whereupon he drove into the city center and fired his assault rifle indiscriminately into the crowds near the synagogue on this mild autumn night.
The fact that this action only cost 4 people their lives is thanks to the unbelievable quality of the Austrian police, especially Vienna’s special unit WEGA. This special unit was on site within a very short time and shot the attacker just 9 minutes after receiving the first emergency call.
The fact that this happened at all is due to a much bigger problem: The secret service action that night against this man and those around him had been betrayed.
Since Edward Snowden and Julian Assange we have known that the betrayal of state secrets is a highly double-edged matter. What does a person do when he realizes that his unit is committing crimes with his help that he cannot reconcile with his conscience? He has two options: Either he becomes corrupt or he becomes a traitor. This cruel truth needs to be spoken: there is no third option. Tertium non datur.
In Austria, the secret service was radically rebuilt with the change of government in 2000. The “Austrian State Police” became the “Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Fight against Terrorism”, the BVT. The unit previously run by social democrats became christian-social. The loyalty of the unit to the ruling party SPÖ was replaced by loyalty to the ruling party ÖVP. When the right-wing populist FPÖ came into government in 2017, they wanted to change this loyalty again. The bureau of the Minister carried out a raid against its own Secret Service. The BVT was destroyed.
Now we are in the rubble of this development, in the blood of All Souls Day. The lives of countless people have been put at risk because a secret action against public enemies has been betrayed. Nobody knows who to rely on in this country in case of doubt anymore.
As if this problem weren’t bad enough, we are facing a much bigger problem. We no longer know who to rely on worldwide. The Austrian secret service is shunned by Western partner services because they can no longer rely on it. There is a solid example of this: Which virus protection program does the BVT use? The US Norton or the Russian Kaspersky?
It is no coincidence that the betrayal of the secret service within the BVT has now become public through a Slovak document that was leaked to the German “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. Slovakia is located East of Austria, in the West of Eastern Europe, a member of EU and NATO, and the only member of the Euro zone within the Višegrad states. Like Austria, Slovakia is torn between East and West, between the USA and the Russian Federation.
And if that wasn’t enough of a problem, we are now facing an even bigger problem: Huawei, yes or no?
4 people were murdered in downtown Vienna on All Souls Day. They died in the turmoil of our world. Who do we want to trust? Who can we trust?
Long live the Republic of Austria, long live my hometown Vienna, long live Europe!
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Dedicated to WEGA, the Viennese Task Force Alarm Department
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Vienna Calling 