Alpen-Donau.info

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Alpen-Donau.info
Far right website
languages German
Registration Yes
On-line 2009–2011, 2014 (currently offline)
www.alpen-donau.info

Alpen-Donau.info (also spellings Alpen-donau.info and alpen-donau.info as well as short form Alpen-Donau ) was a blog that had been used on the Internet since 2009 for right-wing extremist statements in German, mostly relating to Austria . The website, which was hosted on US servers and was considered “the most important mouthpiece” for Austrian neo-Nazis , was taken offline in March 2011 at the instigation of Austrian authorities. In 2014, two citizens made the police aware that the site was active again. These people were outed on the site and their personal data was probably passed on to the operator of the site by the public prosecutor's office.

history

content

The Alpen-Donau.info website has been in operation since April 2009 and received public and media attention due to the “slogans against minorities and politicians” published there. Their operators were conspiratorial and aggressively anti-Semitic . Alpen-Donau.info was considered to be the “central agitation and propaganda platform” of the right-wing extremist scene in Austria and the “ideological mobilization center of the old Nazis and the right wing of the FPÖ ”. In the medium and its internet forum alinfodo.com , which has been active since March 2009 and is only accessible to registered users, hate speech has been going on against foreigners, Jews, dissidents, politicians and journalists since the respective activation. In June 2009, for example, in connection with the historical review of the (then) war memorial in the Vorarlberg municipality of Silbertal , where war criminal Josef Vallaster was honored as a war victim, Alpen-Donau.info - as well as another right-wing extremist website, Altermedia  - threats against the community that had the name removed and individuals.

Investigations

The Austrian domestic secret service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Fight against Terrorism (BVT), registered “240 offenses according to the offense of hatred or the prohibition law” within one and a half years. The "masterminds hid behind the US servers". Since March 2010, a special commission based at the BVT has been investigating the unknown operators. In the summer of 2010, the website attracted attention when it took over the FPÖ's controversial computer game mosque baba . Towards the end of 2010, the investigative authorities carried out several house searches of suspects, for example in Vienna, Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Tyrol. A blogger who reported on the site's activity eventually stopped working after being threatened with his son's murder.

Connection to Werner Königshofer

In order to prove that the then FPÖ member of the National Council Werner Königshofer was connected to the homepage, the data forensic scientist Uwe Sailer sent the mandate a code-provided newspaper article via an anonymous e-mail address, which made the document clearly identifiable . The compromised article finally appeared on the website three days later. Sailer and the lawyer Georg Zanger then reported Königshofer for re-engagement under the Prohibition Act. However, the latter accused Sailer of having sent the document to the makers of alpen-donau.info himself. In an interim injunction, the Vienna Commercial Court finally forbade Königshofer to claim that the data forensic expert had directed the letter to the right-wing extremist website. The court also found that the FPÖ politician had rather sent the information to alpen-donau.info himself:

“ After a decision by the Vienna Commercial Court, the liberal member of the National Council“ undoubtedly ”supplied the neo-Nazi website alpendonau-info.org with material. "

Werner Königshofer was later excluded from the FPÖ because of controversial statements about the terrorist attacks in Norway and postings on his Facebook profile. However, the Standard reported that, according to party insiders, the real reason for the exclusion of Königshofer was his contacts with alpen-donau.info.

Decommissioning and Law Enforcement

In March 2011, the Austrian Ministry of the Interior obtained a shutdown of the website in the USA . In a “last message” on Alpen-Donau.info, their operators reported the deregistration of the website and claimed that there had been “a court settlement with the US hoster ” and that they had “received money from the [Austrian] Interior Ministry”. The Ministry of the Interior denied these allegations and referred to them as “invented stories from the realm of brown legends”. According to a report in the information portal Blick nach Rechts , the California-based provider DreamHost gave way and ultimately took the website off the network because it "increasingly feared for its image". On April 20, 2011, the website went back online with a changed top-level domain .

After months of investigations into the people behind the website, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Cobra Task Force carried out further house searches and arrested two people, including the right-wing extremist publicist Gottfried Küssel , who was suspected of being a key figure . The two arrested are since then in detention . On April 22, 2011, another person was arrested in connection with the investigation into "Alpen-Donau". It is a Viennese man who was subsequently imposed on remand. At the end of 2011 the website went offline again.

On January 10, 2013, Gottfried Küssel as the initiator and the two co-defendants as the operator of the website were sentenced in the first instance to several years imprisonment for National Socialist re-use . In January 2014, the Supreme Court upheld the re-employment convictions and slightly reduced the prison sentences of the three convicts.

Reactivation and legislative initiative

In 2014, two citizens made the police aware that the site was active again. These people were outed on the site and their personal data was probably passed on to the operator of the site by the public prosecutor's office. A spokesman for the interior ministry announced that a change in the law should better protect data.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b (simo): alpen-donau.info .: Neo-Nazis have to turn off the website. In: The Standard . March 22, 2011; Retrieved April 17, 2011.
  2. ↑ a b Chronicle. Right-wing extremist Küssel arrested in Vienna . On: ORF.at from April 12, 2011; Retrieved April 17, 2011.
  3. ^ Alpen-donau.info: Razzia against neo-Nazi scene , Der Standard , April 12, 2012, accessed on April 10, 2013
  4. ↑ a b c Marcel Brecht: Off for virtual meeting point . Up: look to the right . (www.bnr.de) from April 1, 2011; Retrieved April 18, 2011.
  5. ^ Jutta Berger: Silbertal in Vorarlberg. Controversial war memorial removed . In: The Standard . dated June 25, 2009; Retrieved April 17, 2011.
  6. ↑ a b (APA): Ministry of the Interior. Soko "alpen-donau.info" since March . In: The Standard of November 9, 2010; Retrieved April 17, 2011.
  7. ^ Christa Zöchling: Protected Radicals: Neo-Nazi homepage "Alpen-Donau".
  8. ↑ a b Die Presse - Nazi website: preliminary injunction against Königshofer
  9. ↑ News - FPÖ politician "mundtot"
  10. ^ Wiener Zeitung - Königshofer gets into trouble
  11. ↑ Der Standard - FPÖ - Further injunction against Königshofer
  12. ↑ Vienna Commercial Court ruled: FPÖ MP Königshofer fed neo-Nazi side Alpen-Danube “undoubtedly” . Der Falter, 24/11, 22 June 2011
  13. ↑ The standard - backing for Königshofer from the FPÖ club
  14. ^ "Alpen-Donau" neo-Nazi website is online again. In: The Standard. April 20, 2011.
  15. ↑ William Theuretsbacher: pre-trial detention for Gottfried Küssel. The well-known right-wing extremist was arrested as a suspected mastermind of the Alpen-Donau homepage. ( Memento of April 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) In: Kurier .
  16. ↑ orf.at - neo-Nazi homepage: Third arrest
  17. ↑ Küssel: Tight decision with vague evidence , Der Standard, January 11, 2013
  18. ^ Nine years imprisonment for Gottfried Küssel , ORF Online, January 11, 2013
  19. ↑ Supreme Court confirms detention for Küssel and lowers penalties , derstandard.at, January 15, 2014
  20. ^ Neo-Nazi page: Data are better protected Kurier, August 6, 2014