VIENNA: On Wednesday, three men were found guilty again at the Vienna High Court in connection with the terrorist attack in Vienna. They were not only accused for the quadruple murder, with conviction rest judi cata. They were also accused to be the members of the terrorist organisation ‘IS’. This verdict was announced by the eight members jury. The three were sentenced to 20 years and two life sentences respectively. The reason for the retrial was a partial renunciation of the verdict by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court criticised errors in the legal instructions given to the jury and insufficient wording of the verdict, which causes to overturn the sentence. However, the convictions for accessory to murder were not affected by the decision of Supreme Court.
In February 2023, the now 23-year-old was sentenced to 19 years in prison for the purchase of weapons and ammunition. As he was still a young adult at the time of the offence, the maximum sentence in his case would have been 20 years. A 25-year-old who supported the assassin was sentenced to 20 years. The 29-year-old who had encouraged the later assassin to carry out the attack in the assassin’s flat, received a life sentence.
Wednesday’s trial was exclusively about whether they were also members of a terrorist organisation. The defendants pleaded not guilty but the public prosecutor took a different view. The prosecutor did not believe that the defendants had distanced themselves from the radical Islamist ideology.
