Austrian knife attack suspect was radicalised on TikTok, officials say

The 23-year-old Syrian refugee alleged to have killed a teenager and injured five people in a weekend stabbing rampage in the Austrian town of Villach quickly became radicalised by using TikTok, officials said on Monday.

The suspect, identified as Ahmad G, had the flag of the Islamic State (IS) militant group in his apartment but had not previously attracted Austrian authorities' attention. The case highlights the challenge of preventing lone wolf attacks, or when an attacker acts alone without outside help.

His online radicalisation draws further attention to social media platforms such as TikTok that offer users a large amount of content on subjects of interest, which some experts said can accelerate their immersion in them.

“He radicalised himself within three months,” a spokesperson for prosecutors in the nearby city of Klagenfurt, where the investigation is being handled, told Reuters.

“Not through any other person, personal contact online or in person. Evidently he consumed videos and decided to commit the act. There was no other person who said 'do it',” he said.

“He confirmed it and said he watched videos and decided he wanted to join IS.”

In a 2022 post on its website, TikTok said it was committed to finding solutions and working with “civil society on combating violent extremism”.

The attack came days after a 24-year-old Afghan drove into a crowd in Munich in neighbouring Germany, killing two people and injuring dozens. Munich lead prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann said there appeared to be an Islamist motivation.

Police said the Villach suspect used a flip knife for the attack and recorded himself swearing allegiance to IS, adding his aim was to be shot dead by police. Instead, he was arrested within minutes after another Syrian helped to stop him.

A picture of the suspect was widely circulated, showing him sitting in a street and appearing to smile while a police officer faced him moments after the attack.

The suspect is believed to have arrived in Austria in 2019, the prosecutors' office spokesperson said, and wanted to travel to Germany with fake identification so German authorities would not turn him away as an asylum applicant for having been in a safe country, Austria.

A spokesperson for Austria's interior ministry said the suspect spent four days in custody in Germany in May last year after he was unable to pay a fine for falsifying a document, but did not say what kind of document it was.

Reuters