VIENNA — A 17-year-old was handed a six-month suspended sentence on Friday after threatening to kill former Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in a social media post invoking the Islamic State.
The Chechen-born youth, previously without a criminal record, admitted to posting the Instagram threat in August 2024, declaring Nehammer “already in the IS system” and vowing to “come behead/punish” him and other leaders. He also shared extremist propaganda and violent videos through his account.
A Vienna court convicted him of issuing dangerous threats, participating in a terrorist association, and supporting a criminal organization. He was placed under probationary supervision and ordered to attend a deradicalization program. The verdict is final.
In court, the teenager insisted his actions stemmed from anger, not ideology. Days before the threat, police mistakenly circulated his photo in connection with a street brawl, though he denied any involvement. Seeing his image printed in newspapers, he testified, left him humiliated and enraged. “That made me write something brutal,” he told the judge.
The panel pressed him on why Nehammer was targeted. “He had nothing to do with it. I was dumb,” the youth replied. “I wasn’t thinking about what I typed.”
His lawyer argued the teenager was drawn not to extremist beliefs but to the raw violence of IS propaganda, which flooded his social media feed. “The photo in the paper broke something in him,” the attorney said.
By the end of the hearing, the apprentice promised to abandon extremism and focus on completing his training. Now living in a boarding school outside Vienna, he told the court: “I don’t even have time for social media anymore.”
