Upper Austria’s chief of police has spoken out on the nature of the terror threat and rising crime in his central European nation, detailing the extent of operations his officers have undertaken since the Islamist attack on a Christmas market in neighbouring Germany in December.
Revealing his force presently fields some 3,649 active police officers, Upper Austria police chief Andreas Pilsl said in the days following the Berlin attack, in which 12 died, officers stormed 704 migrant homes across Austria. During the raids, the chief said some 15 individuals were particularly “prominent” targets for his officers.
Remarking in an interview with Austria’s Kurier that crimes by asylum seekers had doubled in 2016, chief Pilsl said of the nature of the suspects: “We don’t want to gloss over anything, but we don’t want to be overly dramatic. I even dare to say it is Muslims who stand out most as suspects, this must be allowed”.
For the actions being taken to monitor migrant centres, the senior officer said: “[Non-governmental organisations] and neighbourhood operators have become partners through the KLM [an alliance of Austrian organisations involved in running migration centres], we want to know what is going on in these areas, we have installed our liason officers, and the system has proved its worth.”
Cheif Pilsl’s comments come among growing concern among the Austrian law enforcement community about immigrant crime. As reported by Breitbart London in December, Vienna police handed out some 6,000 pocket rape alarms in a “national campaign aimed primarily at women on New Year’s Eve”. The move came after hundreds of women became victims of sexual assault and rape in neighbouring Germany’s Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015-16.
Despite the precaution, New Year’s Eve celebrations in Austria were still plagued by sexual violence. At least eighteen women in the Tyrolean capital of Innsbruck were sexually assaulted in the city’s main square by men described as having “dark complexions” on New Year’s Eve, with a police spokesman remarking, “It has definitely been proven that they are foreign”.
In Salzburg, a 31-year-old woman from Germany is reported to have been sexually assaulted by an 18-year-old migrant. The Afghan male is understood to have been drunk when he grabbed at the woman’s genitals around midnight.
Follow Oliver Lane on Twitter: Follow @Oliver_Lane or e-mail to: olane@breitbart.com
//