Two members of Austria’s elite Cobra police unit were injured Saturday after the mother of a wanted Islamic extremist hit them with her vehicle as officers were trying to arrest her son.
The incident took place on Saturday in the town of Sellrain near Innsbruck after Austrian authorities had been given a tip by a foreign intelligence agency that the 18-year-old Turkish-born man had threatened to cut the heads off of police officers in posts online.
Following an investigation by the Directorate of Intelligence and State Security (DNS), the elite anti-terrorism Cobra police unit arrived in the town and surrounded the suspect who was with his mother in a vehicle. But the officers themselves were attacked when the man’s mother attempted to run over the elite unit members, Kronen Zeitung reports.
According to the newspaper, two officers were injured as a result of the woman’s actions but ultimately both the woman and her son were taken into custody.
“The Austrian state security authorities are closely monitoring developments in the Islamist scene and are conducting structural investigations in close cooperation with European authorities,” Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said following the incident and wished the officers involved a quick recovery.
The Turkish-born teen, who is said to be a supporter of the Islamic State terrorist group, was remanded into custody on Monday and has since admitted his sympathies for the terrorist group and claimed to have been in contact with other extremists.
Radical Islamic extremism remains a threat across Austria, with the threat highlighted in June when a series of bomb threats were made in several Austrian cities as the trial for a radical Islamic hate preacher began.
The threats came from an anonymous Google mail account and were directed at several courts as well as the Jewish Community of Vienna (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien).
Just months prior in April it was revealed that a former Islamic State terrorist had been working as security at Vienna’s largest Wuhan coronavirus vaccinations site as a security guard. The man’s past was revealed after he was indicted on a sexual offence charge.