Austria carried out searches on Tuesday targeting 40 neo-Nazis spread across the country and suspected of calls to hatred and violence on the internet, the Interior Ministry said.
“Eleven searches were carried out in seven federal provinces on the orders of various prosecutors,” the government wrote in a statement, adding that it had seized “cell phones, data storage tools and Nazi devotional items”.
The suspects have, according to the authorities, made comments on Facebook, in Whatsapp groups or in video game forums that go against the law prohibiting the apology of Nazism. Seven of them are also accused of having incited violence.
Fourteen of these neo-Nazis legally own weapons and two others are prohibited from possessing them.
Adopted in 1947, the Austrian law repressing any activity or speech inspired by Nazism is one of the strictest in Europe.
In another large-scale operation, the Austrian police also searched on Monday more than 60 addresses linked to Islamist movements of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, an operation unrelated to the jihadist attack perpetrated last week in Vienna.