Life and Death in Austria [MEGATHREAD]

[Valmy]

It has since emerged that he is a convicted double murderer who was sentenced to life in prison for killing a policeman and a drug dealer in 1989.

He was released in 2009 after a psychologist classified him as harmless.

Well...I bet that psychologist is glad none of the cops were injured.

[Syt]

http://www.thelocal.at/20150303/la-familia-drug-clan-busted-in-vienna

'La Familia' drug clan busted in Vienna

Vienna police have busted a family of drug dealers and arrested 18 people including the clan head who is said to have made his children addicted to cocaine so that they would be "better dealers".

The 43-year-old father-of-three controlled the gang who called themselves La Familia, and who made around €56,000 a month selling cocaine and marijuana on the streets of the capital.

The father, his wife, his 19-year-old twin sons and 22-year-old daughter, as well as the daughter's two exes and her current boyfriend were the main players. A 44-year-old dealer who lives in a villa in Lower Austria and a 49-year-old benefits recipient who dealt out of a large house in Vienna's Donaustadt were also arrested in raids last week.

Police said that the 43-year-old head of the clan was a particularly nasty character. As well as encouraging his own children to use drugs so as to know their product better he also forced his daughter to retract a statement she made to police after being abused and raped by her 33-year-old boyfriend.

The gang's regular customers included a woman who regularly bought marijuana for her 12-year-old daughter.

The head of the clan led a double life - in the morning he worked in a garage north of Vienna, but in the afternoon he sold drugs and organized deals from his home in Donaustadt.

His 46-year-old wife (his children's stepmother) was in charge of managing the money but also helped her husband mix and deal the drugs, and sometimes transported them to her husband's company address.

His children and his daughter's former lovers were responsible for supplying the customers, mainly from a flat in Floridsdorf. One of the twins was also responsible for running a marijuana plantation with approximately 350 plants, located next to a tennis court in Floridsdorf. The second son sold drugs near his home in Meidling.

The 22-year-old daughter and her abusive boyfriend picked up drugs from her father and delivered them to selected customers, as well as selling from their apartment in Landstrasse. One of the daughter's exes also sold drugs from his workplace - a snack bar in Kaisermühlen. Police said that in order to buy drugs from the clan he took money from the bar's till.

After having the clan under observation, 130 police officers including narcotics detectives as well as special forces police stormed 15 addresses in Vienna and Lower Austria on February 23rd. Eighteen people were arrested within the space of an hour, and most of the family have confessed.

Police found €28,000 worth of cash as well as drugs, shotguns, gas guns, a crossbow, a dagger and a machete. Around 350 cannabis plants were destroyed.

Charming people all around, but I'm betting they're small fry against the really big drug pushers.

[Syt]

http://www.thelocal.at/20150325/psychotic-shaolin-monk-injures-six-police-officers

Psychotic 'Shaolin monk' injures six police officers

Six police officers in Vienna were injured by a psychotic man dressed as a Shaolin monk and wielding a Samurai sword on Monday.

Police spokesman Roman Hahslinger told the Austria Press Agency that the drama started when a woman in an apartment in Kudlichgasse, in the Favoriten district, heard a loud knocking on her door at 2:00am.

She opened the door to find a bald-headed man she had never met before dressed in an orange monk's robe, and armed with a large sword. He pushed his way into her home, and she ran out and called the police.

Three police officers arrived at the building shortly afterwards and found the 39-year-old man in the stairwell.

They surprised him with pepper spray and managed to knock the sword out of his hand but all three officers were seriously injured in the scuffle. As the man seemed to be suffering from mental illness they took him to the Rufolfstiftung psychiatric hospital.

However, he managed to escape from the hospital just hours later and was spotted in Meidling cemetery wearing a white hospital gown.

When three police officers arrived he karate kicked and punched them. Again, they had to use pepper spray to subdue him and then took him back to hospital.

[Malthus]

Is Austria: the Florida of Europe? 

[Admiral Yi]

Why are there so many nut cases in Austria?

[Valmy]

Impossible! Nobody from Austria could be dangerously insane.

[Syt]

http://www.thelocal.at/20150428/pro-smokers-to-protest-in-front-of-parliament

Pro smoking lobby to protest at parliament

Bar and restaurant owners as well as die-hard smokers are demonstrating in front of Austria's parliament on Tuesday afternoon in protest against the general smoking ban which will come into force in May 2018.

Opponents of the ban have gathered 300,000 signatures, many from those who work in the catering industry and believe their businesses will suffer as a result of the ban.

Currently, smoking is banned in public places in Austria under a 2009 law but restaurants and cafes are exempted and the legislation is not tightly enforced.

The organisers of the demonstration, two prominent Viennese restaurant owners, say they plan to "put out smoke signals" on behalf of private businesses and the protest is supported by the Chamber of Commerce.

"The demo aims to show that restaurateurs should be able to decide for themselves what their guests can and can't do. We want a referendum, so that finally the topic can be laid to rest," Heinz Pollischansky told Austrian broadcaster ORF.

The Chamber of Commerce may file a suit in the constitutional court, on behalf of restaurateurs who it says have invested a total of €150 million to create smoking and non-smoking areas in their establishments.

Meanwhile anti-smoking groups have said in an open letter to the economics minister that the three-year 'transition period' which gives businesses time to adjust before the ban comes into force is "shameful and scandalous".

Robert Rockenberger from the Austrian Society for the Protection of Non-Smokers said the three-year grace period was "unacceptable - all restaurant and bar owners need to do to convert their establishments is get rid of the ashtrays".

Austrian politics in action. Yes, a ban is coming, but we'll have a three year(!) transition phase.

A lot of the ire from the bar/restaurant owners is due to the most recent law which came into effect a few years ago, which ruled that establishments below a certain size can choose to be smoking or non-smoking, whereas larger places had to have separate smoking/non-smoking sections. A lot of places had to create those physical barriers.

And quite frankly, if a place has a smoking section, you might as well sit there, because the separation is often so poor that even sitting in the nonsmoking area you'll smell like an ashtray afterwards. Not to mention that the smoking sections are often at the entrance of the restaurant/bar, or at the main bar where you go order drinks, or you have to pass through on the way to the loo. Or the doors between the two are permanently open to allow waiters to pass through.

Based on that, I try to avoid places that have smoking sections, even if non-smoking areas are available.

At any rate, many places put quite some money in following the soon to be obsolete law and now want their investment back.

[The Larch]

They did the same thing here, and it was a total failure. A couple of years down the line a total smoking ban was established, making the bar and restaurant owners that set up the separations look like doofuses. We haven't looked back since then, it has been a great improvement.

[Syt]

The separations were government mandated; and it was actually strictly enforced (which is unusual for Austria), so if your establishment was above a certain size, you had to do them. Now, that was 5 or 6 years ago, and you can probably argue that from an accounting point of view a lot of the expense has already been written off.

[The Larch]

The separations were government mandated; and it was actually strictly enforced (which is unusual for Austria), so if your establishment was above a certain size, you had to do them. Now, that was 5 or 6 years ago, and you can probably argue that from an accounting point of view a lot of the expense has already been written off.

At least it took a while. Over here they first introduced the partial ban, mandating separations, and a couple of years afterwards introduced the complete ban. If I was a bar owner who made a big investment because of this I would have been pretty mad.

[Archy]

The Belgian politicians handled it the same way. First forcing investments for a free smoke area and than a complete ban.

[Syt]

http://www.thelocal.at/20150429/defendants-blame-each-other-in-bank-murder-trial

Bank employees on trial for grisly murder

Two former bank employees are on trial in Graz for murdering and dismembering one of the bank's customers - a 54-year-old Styrian millionaire - after he discovered they had stolen €80,000 from his accounts.

Testimony from the two defendants kicked off the trial on Monday - with both men giving very different versions of events.

On Tuesday the court heard testimony from the wife of the 24-year-old defendant, Ferhat K., who said that she had noticed that her husband had contacted his 30-year-old co-defendant (Halil I.) several times on the days leading up to the murder and that he was often out in the evenings.

When she had asked him what was going on, he told her he was "involved in a matter which he couldn't extricate himself from very easily" and that he and his friend had had to get rid of some drugs.

He later confessed to the murder, just days before he was arrested. "He said that his friend had strangled the man in the car and then dismembered him and encased his body parts in concrete."

She said that she had noticed that her husband's behaviour had changed a few months before his arrest and that a friend of his had remarked on his sudden weight loss. The man's father also testified, saying that his son had changed drastically, was no longer happy and seemed depressed.

The man's wife also said that Halil I. had threatened her husband and family from prison. "He sent word to my husband that if he did not change his testimony, he has to fear for his family, because he has a lot of friends on the outside," she said.

Halil I. denied this, saying that the 24-year-old was his friend. "We even have the same watches, that we bought together," he said.

He told the court that the younger man had committed the murder and that he had watched, but had wanted to forget about it. He said that he had spent the days after the murder with his mistress, a younger woman, in a hotel.

She told the court that he had received many messages on his phone: "I saw fear in his eyes. He was frantically looking at his phone." She added that he hadn't wanted to tell her what was going on. He had given her an expensive watch as a gift but she told the judge that she had no idea where he had got the money from to buy it.

Halil I.'s cellmate testified that the accused had told him about the murder in prison, and had said his 24-year-old accomplice was "too stupid" to do it. He also told him that he had later regretted not hiding the corpse abroad, somewhere like Slovakia.

The coroner told the jury that she had examined three containers of body parts encased in concrete - all weighing around 100 kg. "The body parts were wrapped in black plastic bags and were well preserved because of the cold conditions of the Mur river," she said.

She added that the limbs had been "expertly cut, at the joints". She said that the body was clearly dismembered after death and that she suspected a sharp knife had been used. The victim had died from asphyxiation due to strangulation.

A psychiatric expert told the court that the two defendants did not have any mental health issues. He said that in his opinion the pair had worked together as a team and "would complement each other perfectly".

He described the 24-year-old as "intellectually agile" and capable of coming up with a murder scenario and said that the 30-year-old would then have been to one to work out the grisly details.

A judgement is expected later on Wednesday.

Theft, murder, dismemberments, fear, threats, lovers - this would make a great plot for a noir movie. Setting: the one perp in the hotel room with his younger lover. The text messages he receives take us to flashback sequences of the events from the theft to the murder and getting rid of the body while his girlfriend tries to find out what's going on. Eventually the two killers stop trusting each other and try to pin it on one another, but get both caught in the end.

[Archy]

I guess this is news in Austria since they didn't do it in a hidden cellar to their own family or since there weren't any bodyparts devoured

[Monoriu]

I check my bank statements carefully, and I also use online banking regularly.  If I find out that money has been missing, I will call the police, not the bank   

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I guess this is news in Austria since they didn't do it in a hidden cellar to their own family or since there weren't any bodyparts devoured

heh yeah, clearly non-austrians (going by the name) cause otherwise it'd be in a cellar and news in 2035 when the guy emerges.
Was my thought...