The police may have identified a close accomplice of the Viennese terrorist. There should be many clues against the native Afghan, who has Austrian citizenship. His DNA traces were found on weapons and cartridges that were used in the attack. This is what “Der Standard” reports in its Thursday edition. The 27-year-old HZ, who has been in custody since December, is said to have lived with the assassin, among other things.
According to “Standard”, his behavior on the day of the attack also appears suspicious to the investigators: his cell phone was switched off from midday until the time of the attack, after which it was deactivated. His wife, according to Islamic law, provided him with an alibi until she revoked it: She said that on the evening of the crime, the Z. family deleted chats together and covered up traces. A key to the attacker’s apartment is also said to have been handed over to the father of HZ.
According to the report, the Z. family is officially known. The Vienna State Office for the Protection of the Constitution writes in a report that the “clan” has been identified “for years as (…) deeply Islamist fundamentalist”. Several of HZ’s cousins joined the IS terrorist militia in Syria in 2015, most of them perished – one cousin is said to be imprisoned in Iraq.
The authorities have already noticed HZ, the list of convictions of the now 27-year-old Afghan native is said to be long: robbery, bodily harm, coercion and damage to property. If he were not an Austrian citizen, he would have threatened to be deported to Afghanistan several times, according to “Der Standard”. So HZ stayed in Austria, once in prison, once outside again. He and his wife fathered three children – she became pregnant with the youngest shortly after the terrorist attack.
The woman “does not seem to be sure of her relationship, her role is ambivalent,” writes the newspaper. On the one hand, they translate and correct texts for HZ from the IS support portal “Ahlut-Tawhid Publications”. On the other hand, she separated from him three months before the attack because he wanted a second wife. And she wrote in chats to friends that she was scared. For example, on those summer days in July 2020 when an international jihadist meeting took place in Vienna. At that time, German authorities asked their colleagues in Austria to carry out an observation of the Islamists arriving from Dortmund. Investigators also discovered the later Vienna assassin KF among those present. After the meeting, he went to Slovakia to buy ammunition. The fact that these processes did not trigger an alarm was later interpreted as a failure by the authorities.
It is not yet publicly known that the German, Swiss and local jihadists are said to have been guests of the Z. family: First in the apartment of HZ’s parents, then in his apartment with his wife. A photo with twelve pairs of shoes was found on their cell phone that day. The mobile phone of the later assassin KF logged in on July 19, 2020 near HZ’s apartment.
HZ has been in custody since December, and his wife has been released. The authorities have “strong suspicions” that he spent “the hours before the crime” with KF in order to prepare him for the planned assassination attempt. They even think it is possible that HZ drove him near the crime scene, but found no traces in the cars used by HZ. It is the presumption of innocence. Lawyer Elmar Kresbach accused the authorities of dragging HZ into something in order to cover up their own failures. His client “knew nothing”, “certainly not transported the assassin to the scene of the crime” and he was “certainly not with the assassin” in the hours before the attack.