Austrian Police Raid Muslim Centers Over Syria War Ties
Prayer houses in city of Graz suspected of recruitment and financing of Syrian rebels.
Two Muslim houses of prayer were raided by police in the Austrian city of Graz because of alleged recruitment and financing to support rebels fighting in Syria, prosecutors said Thursday.
The raids were carried out this week as part of an ongoing terrorism investigation against ultraconservative Salafist Muslim groups in Graz, a prosecution spokesman was quoted as saying by the Austrian press agency APA.
No one was arrested, but documents and electronic files were seized.
The police action at the prayer houses was triggered after four young Chechen asylum seekers died in the Syrian civil war, the daily Kleine Zeitung reported.
Since the beginning of the conflict, 80 to 100 people have left Austria to fight against the government in Syria, according to the Austrian Interior Ministry.
Interpol is currently searching for two teenage girls from Vienna who ran away from their families to fight with Islamists in Syria. Their parents, Bosnian refugees, said the girls were abducted rather than radicalized.
Austria is not the only country dealing with radicalized Muslim youth joining the civil war in Syria. About 500 youths from France are said to have embarked on journeys to Syria, more than from any other European country. Hundreds of Britons as well are thought to have joined rebels fighting the forces of Assad and up to 20 may have died in the conflict, the BBC reported.
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