Austrian police arrested four members of a Chechen “morality gang” in Vienna for threatening to behead another man’s children if he did not give them money.
The young Chechens, aged between 21 and 25, demanded €5,000 from their victim, telling him that they knew where he worked, where his family lives, and where his two children attended school.
The four men allegedly stated that if the man did not pay them the cash, they said they would “take the heads off your sons”, Austrian tabloid Kronen Zeitung reports.
According to the newspaper, the man and his family have been placed under police protection and the elite police unit WEGA was behind the arrest of the four men.
The Chechen gang, many of whom are refugees, are also said to have kept files on hundreds of women accused of acting inappropriately. Such infractions include not wearing an Islamic headscarf, posting photographs in bathing suits online, or meeting with non-Chechen men. The group has also been accused of filming violent attacks on their mobile phones.
Chechen ‘morality police’ are a developing phenominon in high-immigration European cities. They have also been seen in the German capital of Berlin, with a 2017 report claiming that Chechens enforce sharia law among other community members.
A Chechen woman described to German media how the gang had followed her while she was in the company of a non-Chechen man. The morality gang then beat the man, knocking out his teeth.
“Why does my private life concern [them] at all?” she said and added: “I don’t know them. I don’t want to. I’m not their sister or daughter. My private life is no one else’s business.”
Chechens have also been linked to radical Islamic terrorism in recent years, including teenage refugee Abdulzakh Anzorov who beheaded French teacher Samuel Paty in October of last year.
Police shot Anzorov dead following the murder. When his body was brought back to his native Chechnya, crowds gathered and praised the terrorist’s actions.