LINZ. Since last week, bomb threats have been received almost daily in Linz and other Austrian capitals – what the reasons might be behind them and why reporting them is a balancing act.
It started with a threatening e-mail on Monday, September 30th against the main train and eastern stations in Graz, and Linz on Tuesday of the same week and then Salzburg, St. Pölten, Klagenfurt, Bregenz, Eisenstadt.
Investigations are underway
There were also a series of bomb threats against schools in Linz this year; the academic high school was affected in May, the special school on Teistlergutstraße in September and the Otto Glöckel School last week. This Tuesday around 10 am a threat was received against Ramsau high school. For tactical reasons, the police release only limited information, but announced that in the case of the threats against the train stations, the content of the e-mails was similar and it was therefore assumed that there was a link or that the same person there. As the public prosecutor’s office Graz Tips confirmed, a specific examination is currently being carried out to see if there is a connection between the threats against the train stations in Graz and Linz and those against the Otto Glöckel School.
A study of bomb threats between 2008 and 2010
Regarding bomb threats in Austria, an analysis of such incidents has been commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior between 2008 and 2010 (Kreissl, Reinhard/Gruber, Klaus 2012. “Phenomenology of bomb threats”). For this purpose, questionnaires were sent to 34 different police authorities and police stations in Austria where one or more cases of bomb threats were processed.
The perpetrators are mostly men, schools are frequent targets
62 cases were assessed; none of them used actual explosives. The police still have to act every time, even if the probability is low you can’t risk an explosion. According to this analysis, bomb threats are of interest to a group of actors “whose goal is to achieve sustainable effects without endangering their own risk”. These are mostly perpetrators of crime (70 percent); However, in about half of the cases no conclusions could be drawn as to the cause; the officers often said “no reason or several reasons” in the questionnaires.
What comes with the events in Austria this year is the evaluation of the targets against which bomb threats are directed. The majority of these were schools (25.8 percent), 29 percent were public places and buildings as well as company property. The clearance rate was very high compared to other crimes at 40.3 percent.
Prevention strategy: Minimizing the success of perpetrators
The authors conclude that “for potential victims, a specific behavioral approach to prevent negative psychological, material and ideational consequences appears to be the most promising.” If the damage caused by bomb threats to the victim could be minimized, the “success” of the perpetrator would be reduced. This would also make a bomb threat less attractive to potential perpetrators. It is precisely the indirect consequences (large police presence, fear among the population) of bomb threats that are often the target of the perpetrators.
The problem with free drivers,
It is also known that after bomb threats and increased reporting of them, copycats emerge. The media must manage a balancing act here: on the one hand, it is important to reliably inform the public, for example about current lockdowns and security measures, and on the other hand, incentives must to avoid possible additional actions. That’s why the police make it clear time and time again that this is no trivial offence: the limit for dangerous threats and coercion is up to three years in prison, and the perpetrators have to pay the costs of the operation too. For the crime of land coercion, the potential sentence is increased to five years if there is serious or long-term disruption to public life.
According to the “Niederösterreichische Nachrichten”, the investigation is mainly carried out by the state offices for state security and combating extremism (LSE) in cooperation with the Directorate of State Security and Intelligence (DSN).