A 21-year-old who was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a coworker has been revealed to be a former Islamic State terrorist who managed to obtain a security job at Austria’s largest Chinese coronavirus vaccination site.
The 21-year-old was arrested in January after allegations that he had tried to force himself on one of his coworkers at the Austria Centre Vienna (ACV) where he worked as a security guard, which also serves as the largest Wuhan coronavirus vaccination site in the country.
On Wednesday, the man was indicted for the alleged sex attack and his criminal history first became known as the court noted that in 2017 when the man was 17, he had been convicted to two and half years in prison for being a member of a terrorist organisation but only served ten months behind bars.
The year prior the man had attempted to join the Islamic State terrorist group and receive combat training in Syria but had been caught by Turkish authorities in the southern border town of Gaziantep in May of 2016 and sent back to Austria, Kronen Zeitung reports.
Just months after he was sent back to Austria by Turkish authorities, the man was caught attempting to recruit eleven and twelve-year-old boys in a park for the terror group in July of that year.
Neither the Austrian Centre Vienna nor the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund aid organisation that runs the vaccination centre, claim to have known of the man’s criminal background.
“The security company in question is a renowned company and has assured us of the police inspection of all employees employed in the ACV. We are shocked by what has happened. We would like to express our sympathy to the victim and hope for a quick legal clarification,” the aid organisation said.
The 21-year-old, who is still an employee of the ACV, claimed he is innocent of the charges of sexual abuse and rape against his colleague, stating that the sexual relations between the two had been consensual.
Radical Islamic extremism remains a major issue in Austria and the country is said to have one of the largest numbers of residents going overseas to fight for Islamic terrorist groups per capita in Europe, according to the Journal for Deradicalization, a peer-reviewed academic journal.
The Islamic State also played a part in the 2020 Vienna terrorist attack that saw four people fatally shot by terrorist Kujtim Fejzulla, who was said to have been in contact with a German member of the terror group as well as a Turkish supporter of the Islamic state.
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