Shots fired at Russian Consulate General: Investigators say there was no evidence against suspect before attack

According to the Salzburg public prosecutor’s office, there was no evidence of radicalization against the suspected Munich shooter before the attack. According to the authorities, the 18-year-old Austrian had not moved in Islamist circles in the past.

According to the report, there was suspicion that the alleged shooter killed on Thursday had threatened fellow students, allegedly causing bodily harm. In addition, there was suspicion that he was interested in instructions on how to build bombs and that he may have been involved in a terrorist organization by depicting Islamist violence scenes in an online game. These allegations relate to the period from 2021 to 2023.

Videos of computer game with Islamist scenes found

Investigators therefore searched the youth’s home in Salzburg and confiscated the data storage device. However, no relevant material was found on his mobile phone, the authorities said. They discovered three videos from a computer game on his PC that the then 14-year-old had recorded. They show scenes with Islamist content. Symbols of the Islamist group HTS were visible on one of these videos.

No evidence was found that the videos had been distributed. Playing such a computer game and recreating scenes of Islamist violence did not constitute participation in a terrorist organization, the public prosecutor’s office said. According to reports from the South German NewspaperThere was also material related to the HTS group on the 18-year-old’s cell phone.

HTS stands for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a militant Islamist militia. The Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution writes that HTS emerged in 2017 from the merger of a former Al-Qaeda offshoot and several smaller militant Syrian groups. Unlike Al-Qaeda, which is planning further attacks in the West, HTS is concentrating on Syria and wants to overthrow the ruler there, Bashar al-Assad.

The Bavarian police had no information about suspects

The suspect from Austria shot at police officers in front of the Israeli Consulate General in Munich on Thursday. The officers then shot him dead. According to the State Criminal Police Office, he was armed with a Swiss military weapon from the 19th century.

The Bavarian police said they had no information about the 18-year-old Austrian before the attack. A query of the databases was negative, said a spokesman for the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation.

A weapons ban had been imposed on him, which would have remained in force until at least the beginning of 2028, according to the Salzburg police. After the Munich attack, German investigators assume that it was an attempted terrorist attack.