Explosives detonated on two car underbodies in southern Styria on Friday evening, but no one was injured. This was announced by the Styrian State Police Headquarters in a broadcast on Saturday. An unidentified person planted the explosives while the vehicle’s owners were at a prayer meeting organized by the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith community. Whether there is a connection is still being investigated.
The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Combating Terrorism (LVT) has set up its own investigative team. Criminalists from the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) in Styria, explosives experts from the police and the defusing service also took up the investigation. A crime scene work and the securing of evidence were carried out during the night, it was said on Saturday.
The car owners, a man and a woman, had parked their vehicles between 6:45 p.m. and 9 p.m. in a gravel parking lot near the prayer room in Leibnitz. According to police spokesman Markus Lamb, they should apparently also be allowed to park there. While the members of Jehovah’s Witnesses were still praying, they heard a loud bang from outside, but couldn’t classify it, Lamb said when asked by APA. When the woman went out to her car, she noticed parts of her car lying around.
About an hour later, around 9:00 p.m., the man got into his vehicle and drove home. After a few kilometers, an explosive device mounted on the underbody also detonated. According to Lamb, the driver was unharmed, but that was just “luck”. Only then was it clear that an explosive device may have detonated under the car in the woman’s car. Both vehicles were damaged.
While the investigators are now examining all the components of the explosive devices, potentially endangered facilities are being made aware of and police surveillance is being increased, the investigators said. The motive situation is currently completely open. As the “Kurier” reported, the explosive devices are said to have been pipe bombs. However, the police did not want to confirm or deny this for tactical reasons. For the time being, no one wanted to announce anything about a possible faulty construction between the detonator and the explosives, which is said to have prevented a catastrophe.
The incident is made even more explosive by the fact that the summer congress of the “witnesses” has been taking place in Vienna’s Happel Stadium since Friday and up to and including Sunday. According to the police, around 9,000 believers gather there. The security precautions have been strengthened accordingly, it said on Saturday afternoon when asked by the APA. The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Combating Terrorism is also involved. The meeting took place on Saturday as planned, and it is to be continued on Sunday.
Michael Schumacher, SPÖ mayor of Leibnitz, was shocked in an interview with the APA: “It surprises everyone and one is shocked. The region is known for its well-being and now we are so shaken by a flood of the century, as a society and as a region, and then something like that is added to it. It leaves you speechless and stunned.” The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a completely inconspicuous religious community in Leibnitz and have never attracted negative attention. Schumacher was not brought closer to any conflict in connection with the Jehovah’s Witnesses in his municipality.
It was only in March that a 35-year-old killed seven people – including an unborn child – at a community meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hamburg. He then killed himself.
2023-08-19 23:51:04
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