Austria to reform intelligence agency after damning report into Vienna attack

Austria’s government has promised a root-and-branch reform of its intelligence community after a damning official inquiry blamed spymasters for failing to prevent the deadly terror attack in Vienna in November.

Interior minister Karl Nehammer vowed to erect “a new, strong wall of the republic” by replacing the country’s security service — the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism [BVT] — with a “genuinely new” organisation.

Speaking at a press conference in Vienna, Nehammer said he would double the size of Austria’s counter-terrorism effort and set tough new national security legislation in motion.

The official independent report into Austria’s worst terror attack in decades was published on Wednesday and listed numerous failures by the BVT.

“The [repeatedly] promised restructuring of the BVT should now be carried out transparently and without further delays,” concluded criminal lawyer Ingeborg Zerbes, who led the inquiry.

Four people were killed and 23 injured by a lone Islamist gunman who marauded through the streets of Vienna’s old city on the evening of November 2 before he was shot by police response teams.

Armed with a rifle, handgun and machete, the attacker began his rampage at around 8pm outside Vienna’s main synagogue, and went on to target bars and restaurants. The city centre was crowded with Viennese celebrating their last evening out before the imposition of a new lockdown to combat the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, which came into force at midnight.

The perpetrator — a 20-year-old Austrian, Kujtim Fejzullai — had previously served a prison sentence for attempting to travel to Syria to join Isis.

The BVT had been warned by its Slovakian counterpart before the attack that Fejzullai had attempted to procure ammunition.

The Zerbes inquiry’s report gave striking detail of how the BVT kept no central, digitised database for its employees to collate intelligence on persons of interest and produce leads on emerging terror threats.

It also painted a picture of chaotic communication and rivalry in Austria’s regionalised security apparatus, with a burdensome level of local autonomy.

Reacting to the findings, Austrian vice-chancellor, Werner Kogler — leader of the junior coalition partner Green party in the conservative-led government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz — said the BVT was a “failure” and must be “reorganised from top to bottom”.

The country needed an intelligence service “with the best brains and real control by parliament, as has long been the case elsewhere in Europe”, said Kogler.

The inquiry’s findings will make uncomfortable reading for Kurz, who has long put national security and public safety at the centre of his politics.

The report said plans to criminalise “political Islam” — the centrepiece of new anti-terror legislation championed by the chancellor in the aftermath of the attack — were “superfluous”.