EXCLUSIVE: GIOR Identifies Likely Muslim Brotherhood Leadership In Austria

Fol­low­ing the raids ear­li­er in Novem­ber tar­get­ing a large num­ber of Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als in Aus­tria sus­pect­ed of ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Hamas, Aus­tri­an media is report­ing that the author­i­ties have iden­ti­fied the lead­er­ship of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the coun­try. Accord­ing to the Der Stan­dard arti­cle:

Inves­ti­ga­tors are said to have iden­ti­fied the high­est Mus­lim Broth­er in Aus­tria. Five oth­er lead­er­ship cadres are said to ral­ly around him. DER STANDARD took a look at the doc­u­ments from the author­i­ties that led to the house search. With the raid in the vicin­i­ty of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the gov­ern­ment obvi­ous­ly want­ed to set an exam­ple: Take action and look care­ful­ly when agi­ta­tion is car­ried out or mon­ey is col­lect­ed in the name of polit­i­cal Islam. Prepa­ra­tions took a year and a half before access came. A total of 46 apart­ments and busi­ness premis­es as well as eight asso­ci­a­tions and foun­da­tions were searched. Thir­ty peo­ple were brought before the police and questioned.

Read the rest here.

(Trans­lat­ed with Google Trans­late with minor edits)

The arti­cle goes on to iden­ti­fy “A.S.” as the high­est Mus­lim Broth­er in Austria:

Accord­ing to an anony­mous whistle­blow­er of the author­i­ties, A. S. is said to be the “lead­ing Mus­lim Broth­er in Aus­tria”. His wife is the sis­ter of the alleged boss of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Ger­many and Europe. For a while she head­ed an orga­ni­za­tion that trains reli­gious teach­ers. Under her pre­vi­ous name, she was respon­si­ble for a Ger­man-Islam­ic pri­ma­ry school in Ger­many until 2002. This was closed only three years lat­er for lack of con­sti­tu­tion­al loy­al­ty because the spon­sor­ing asso­ci­a­tion appar­ent­ly had a con­nec­tion to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. A. S met three alleged activists of the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion Hamas in a restau­rant in Vien­na at the end of July, who are also among the accused. A. cur­rent­ly lives in a house that belongs to the foun­da­tion of the for­mer IGGÖ Pres­i­dent Anas Schak­feh. The foun­da­tion is also part of the inves­ti­ga­tion. A. S. is sup­posed to lead a group of five more men.

(Trans­lat­ed with Google Translate)

The group of the oth­er four Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers in Aus­tria is fur­ther iden­ti­fied as:

• “J.M.” and  “A.M.” who have both found­ed an orga­ni­za­tion that the author­i­ties call the “cen­tral branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Austria.”

• “D.”, who is sus­pect­ed of “being a lead­ing per­son­al­i­ty from the cen­tral Hamas envi­ron­ment in Austria”

• “O.” who “comes from the envi­ron­ment of a Mus­lim youth orga­ni­za­tion” and is accused of exer­cis­ing a lead­er­ship role with­in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Austria”

(Trans­lat­ed with Google Translate)

A.S. like­ly stands for Ammar Shakir. Shakir is the hus­band of Ame­na Shakir, who was in charge of train­ing Islam­ic reli­gious teach­ers in Aus­tria. In turn, Ame­na Shakir is the sis­ter of Ibrahim El-Zay­at, one of the most impor­tant lead­ers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Ger­many and Europe. J.M. and A.M. like­ly stands for Jamal and Aiman Morad, two broth­ers who found­ed Liga Kul­tur, an Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tion in Vien­na and Graz rep­re­sent­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Aus­tria. D. like­ly stands for Adel Dogh­man, the for­mer leader of the Palasti­nen­sis­che Vere­ini­gung in Oster­re­ich (PVO), described by the  US Trea­sury as a “Hamas-affil­i­at­ed” char­i­ty involved in rais­ing funds for Hamas.

Final­ly, O. like­ly stands for Alexan­der Osman, a for­mer leader of Mus­lim­is­che Jugend Öster­re­ichs, which was a mem­ber of the Forum of Euro­pean Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Organ­i­sa­tions (FEMYSO).

Ear­li­er in Novem­ber, the Glob­al Infor­ma­tion Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that Aus­tri­an police had con­duct­ed raids tar­get­ing a large num­ber of Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als sus­pect­ed of ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Hamas in the coun­try. The Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is a transna­tion­al Islamist net­work cov­ered by the GIOR.