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According to prosecutors, all of the accused were under surveillance for at least one year and were observed for over 21,000 hours, meaning the police knew the affected persons were not in possession of weapons or any other dangerous objects at home and were aware of the presence of children and babies in the family homes.

It was also then revealed that no weapons or explosives were found. No arrests were made, despite highly aggressive interrogations.

The manner by which the police carried out the raids were highly questionable, particularly as the police had enough information prior to the raids being carried out, to not warrant such a needlessly aggressive raid.

Due to that the impacted persons reported that they and their lawyers weren’t given access to the files against them for over two months, until 22nd of January 2021.

After studying the search warrants, it became evident that the raids were based on an ideological and political study of the Muslim Brotherhood by Lorenzo Vidino, a study which is already considered contentious in public discourse.

Some of the questions the police were asking the accused include: “How many friendships do you and your family maintain with autochthonous (long-established) or non-Muslim Austrians?” – begging the question why it is relevant for the police to distinguish between non-Muslim Austrians and Muslim Austrians – as well as “Does your wife wear a headscarf?” and “Should Austrian children or children who grew up in Austria be brought up to be martyrs?”, underlining the ideological and Islamophobic nature of the raids.

It is important to point out that this operation, one of the largest ever carried out in Austria and even Europe at the time, was wholly political in nature.

One further question asked was whether the individuals were: “In favour of waking the wife and children up for prayer times at around 4am?” – ignoring  the fact that the police were invading the family’s home at 5am to ask this question.

Most families’ bank accounts were frozen and cash taken away, leaving them with nothing, and begging the question as to how they might sustain themselves.

On the 3rd February, Amnesty International published a report entitled A Human Rights Guide for Researching Racial and Religious Discrimination in Counterterrorism in Europe which states that “discrimination against Muslims in the counterterrorism context in Europe is a longstanding human rights concern.

In the last two decades lawful Muslim religious, cultural, and political activities and affiliations have been construed as “dangerous” enough to justify significant restrictions on individual rights.

On dehumanising Muslim children

It goes without saying that children should never be rendered guilty based on what their parents are being accused of – whether or not the accusations are substantiated.

Yet as a result of the terror-framing and dehumanisation of the affected children, they were subject to the abuse of power of the police – who were themselves excused, meaning that they did not have to answer for their abuses to either a governmental or non-governmental body. 

Amnesty International highlighted in its report that “unfortunately, despite widespread acknowledgement of this issue from the UN and other European institutions, discrimination against Muslims has generally received less attention from human rights groups and oversight bodies.”

On child deportation

One is filled with slightly more hope when Austrians recently expressed their outrage at Interior Minister Nehammer’s order to deport school children to Armenia and Georgia.