Attacks on ICE trains: life imprisonment for Iraqi refugee

VIENNA. The Vienna Regional Court sentenced an Iraqi to life imprisonment for several attacks on an ICE route in Bavaria on Thursday evening. The jury was convinced that the 44-year-old man tried four times on behalf of the Islamic State (IS) in 2018 to derail trains on the Munich-Nuremberg route.

The wife of the man recognized as a refugee in Austria was also accused, ORF reported. The public prosecutor's office had accused the 33-year-old woman of having prepared the deeds. She was acquitted for lack of evidence. The Iraqi authorities had charged the Iraqi with multiple attempted murder as a terrorist offense, serious damage to property and a “terrorist organization”. The accused had confessed to some points, but denied membership of the Islamic State.

Wife acquitted - husband had contact with Swiss IS supporters
The Iraqi had, among other things, stretched steel cables across the ICE route and placed wedges and metal parts on the tracks. The trains were damaged, but they remained on the rails. Nobody was injured in the four attacks. During the two-day negotiation, the Iraqi stated that he had drawn attention and wanted Germany and the EU to withdraw their soldiers from Iraq. “What I did was a big mistake. It was impulsive."

According to investigators, the man had been in contact with the terrorist militia since entering the country in 2012. He had communicated regularly with an Iraqi living in Switzerland who was convicted in 2017 as the head of an IS cell. The convicted man, who lives in Vienna, initially scouted out attack targets in France before he came across the idea of derailing trains in Germany in an IS magazine .

Source: Junge Freiheit