Acquittal of Muslim Activists and Academics in Austria After 2-Years of Raids and Media Targeting

January 11, 2023, the Higher Regional Court of Graz, Austria’s second-largest city, dropped the charges against Austrian academic Farid Hafez and ruled that no evidence was provided in the allegations.

The acquittal came more than two years after the authorities stormed his home and froze his assets. Many Muslim civil society leaders and academicians had been acquitted before him.

Hafez’s apartment was one of about 70 homes of Muslim activists and academics raided in November 2020 in what the Austrian interior minister described as the Luxor Operation.

The Luxor operation was the largest police operation that Austria has witnessed since 1945, targeting academic and Muslim civil society leaders.

The courts dropped the charges against most of the defendants after two years of media attacks and political targeting.

 

‘I Was Astounded, to Say the Least’

Professor Farid Hafez, the iconic victim of Operation Luxor. Pr. Hafez disclosed in an opinion article on Middle East Eye website that in the name of targeting alleged terrorists, 100 defendants were included in the preliminary investigation against leaders of Muslim civil society and critics of discriminatory policies implemented during the chancellorship of Sebastian Kurz (2017—2021), which were mostly rescinded by the courts.

Pr. Hafez immigrated to the US and is now a Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College and a non-resident Senior Researcher at Georgetown University’s The Bridge Initiative.

He pointed out: “When, on November 9, 2020, special forces of the Austrian police stormed my house in Vienna at 5 am, they handed me a search warrant that claimed that I could be a terrorist wanting to topple the Egyptian government and create a worldwide caliphate. I was astounded, to say the least.”

Describing the dramatic impact of the operation on his life course, Pr. Hafez said: “The implications were dramatic and wide-ranging. The raid left my whole family, especially my young children, traumatized. I felt constantly insecure due to the tapping of my phone and other surveillance measures. My bank account and assets were frozen for two years.”

He emphasized: “More importantly, while the identity of most targets of Operation Luxor were not disclosed, media coverage turned me into the public face of the defendants.”

Al-Estiklal newspaper asked Pr. Hafez if the government provided adequate compensations for the dramatic material and psychological damages that Operation Luxor caused to Austrian Muslims after being targeted for about two years with false charges.

His answer was that compensation would have to come from the responsible authorities, which are the State Prosecutor and the Ministry of Interior. Politically, nobody wants to take responsibility, and compensations are minimal in Austrian jurisdiction when it comes to criminal law.

 

Severe Violations

In November 2020, the Austrian security authorities started Operation Luxor against the so-called “Islamists” in the country. The operation was under the direct supervision of Interior Minister Karl Nehammer and Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, targeting official associations that have been operating for years in the country.

Under the pretext of fighting “Islamic terrorism,” the anti-terrorism forces stormed homes and headquarters.

The New Arab report indicated that the campaign targeted anyone who has shown sympathy for Hamas and has a position opposing the rule of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi.

About 930 Austrian security men participated in raiding dozens of headquarters and homes in 4 states, including Vienna, Lower Austria, Carinthia, and Styria. This campaign expanded to clubs, apartments, and shops owned by people who had nothing to do with the two movements.

Pr. Hafez stressed that Kurz’s government closed mosques, banned the hijab, and finally established the Documentation Centre Political Islam to monitor Muslim civil society in order to ultimately make “political Islam” a criminal offense.

The Ministry of Interior confirmed that despite all the raids, nothing was found linking those headquarters, clubs, and homes to the two movements, and in particular to the Muslim Brotherhood, as it is originally a group that does not operate on Austrian territory, according to the Vienna newspaper.

The Vienna newspaper revealed that many of the Muslim civil society leaders who were subjected to riots have strong and professional networks and they have become increasingly linked to Western elites and Muslims of the European continent.

 

Dark Nexus

The Austrian Muslim Association, which is also targeted by the security crackdown, criticized the attempt to link its institution to terrorist acts. Local media, including the Austrian TV website, reported the astonishment of the country’s Muslim organizations and the Social Democratic party, in which many Austrian Muslim youths are active.

Prominent personalities in Austria’s society are part of Muslim civil organizations, such as university professors and scholars of Syrian, Egyptian, Palestinian and Maghreb origins.

The extreme right-wing leaders, including the former head of the Austrian Freedom party Norbert Hofer and the former Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, were leading and justifying the attack on Muslims in the country.

Hofer proposed to link an electronic bracelet to the suspects of “Islamic radicalism” and to put them under constant surveillance. This is in addition to a campaign of defamation and incitement against Muslim figures and institutions in the country that were established many years ago.

The AGENFOR International organization’s report, entitled Operation Luxor: When Security Becomes Islamophobia, sheds light on many aspects of Operation Luxor. It highlighted the dark nexus of Islamophobia that provides material assistance to the Austrian state in targeting Muslims. Moreover, the report emphasized the role played by some radically inspired academics in the development of these illegal and abusive actions.

The report explained: “There are some anomalies in the arrest orders put in place by the judiciary under political pressure. Among these is the involvement, before launching the raids, of alleged “experts” who happened to have far-right views; namely, Lorenzo Vidino, ‘expert witness’ of the State Prosecutor in the ideological reasoning, who was referenced 35 times in the Luxor arrest warrants.”

It added that Vidino is widely-known for supporting conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and the United States alongside disseminating dangerous theories in several countries—above all, Switzerland and Italy.

The security campaign could not provide any evidence that confirms the links of any of the detainees or the places of the raid with terrorism or weapons. Thus, the court acquittal was a natural result that came after two years of suffering.

It is noteworthy that unlike European countries, such as Germany, France, and Scandinavia, Austria does not include suburbs for immigrants but are distributed in mixed housing complexes.