Poland charges three men with planning school attack inspired by Norway's Breivik
WARSAW - Poland has charged three 19-year-old men suspected of gathering pyrotechnic materials and planning terrorist actions, including an attack on a school inspired by mass-killers such as Norwegian Anders Breivik, the interior ministry said on Thursday.
"It appears that they were fascinated by the ideology that spreads terrorism, by these serial killers who, as in the case of Norway, killed several dozen people," ministry spokesman Jacek Dobrzynski told reporters.
"They apparently sought to do something similar here in our country," he added.
In Norway's worst peacetime atrocity, Breivik, an anti-Muslim neo-Nazi, killed 77 people in 2011. He first killed eight with a car bomb in Oslo and then gunned down 69, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp on Utoeya island.
Dobrzynski declined to comment on local media reports that the three suspects' plan had been to attack a school in the northern Polish city of Olsztyn.
Earlier, Dobrzynski wrote on social media platform X that the suspects had been collecting information on firearms handling, shooting postures, and combat operations in open areas and indoors. They attended shooting ranges and conducted military-tactical training, an investigation in Olsztyn showed.
Unlike some other European nations, Poland has not experienced a terrorist attack in its modern history.
The decision to charge the three men in Poland comes as Austria mourns the 10 victims of a 21-year-old gunman at his former high school in the city of Graz, in one of the worst outbreaks of violence in that country's modern history. The gunman, whose motive remains unclear, also killed himself. REUTERS
Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
3 hours ago
- Straits Times
US immigration officials told to largely pause raids on farms, hotels
The new guidance comes after protests in LA against the Trump administration's immigration raids, including at farms and businesses. PHOTO: REUTERS WASHINGTON - The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three US officials with knowledge of the guidance. The decision suggested that the scale of President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign – an issue that is at the heart of his presidency – is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose. The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration's immigration raids, including at farms and businesses. It also came as Mr Trump made a rare concession this week that his crackdown was hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses. The guidance was sent June 12 in an email by a senior ICE official Tatum King to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including worksite operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations. 'Effective today, please hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,' he wrote in the message. The email explained that investigations involving 'human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK'. But it said – crucially – that agents were not to make arrests of 'noncriminal collaterals', a reference to people who are living in the country illegally but who are not known to have committed any crime. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the guidance. 'We will follow the president's direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America's streets,' Ms Tricia McLaughlin, a department spokesperson, said in a statement. For months, Mr Trump and his aides have said they would target all immigrants without legal status in the United States to make good on his campaign promise for mass deportations. Although the administration came into office saying it would initially target immigrants living in the country illegally and who had criminal records, it has in recent weeks expanded to raiding worksites and sweeping up other unauthorized immigrants broadly. On June 12, Mr Trump acknowledged that the crackdown might be alienating industries that he wanted to keep on his side. 'Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,' he said on social media. Mr Trump posted after Ms Brooke Rollins, the secretary of agriculture, informed him of farmers who were concerned about the ICE enforcement affecting their businesses, according to a White House official and a person familiar with the matter. Mr Trump has for decades owned luxury hotels, an industry with a strong immigrant labour force. A former Trump administration official added that throughout his first term, Mr Trump often heard concerns from some Republicans from rural states about how the immigration crackdown would hurt the agricultural industry. The decision to scale back operations at worksites comes at a crucial time, and the implications of the guidance are still to be determined on the ground. The guidance did not appear to rule out raids at worksites in other industries, like the one at a garment factory in Los Angeles that sparked the protests. In recent weeks, Mr Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has publicly pushed for a 'minimum' of 3,000 arrests per day. After his comments, arrests shot up to over 2,000 a day last week, and in recent days and weeks, ICE officials have conducted operations at restaurants, factories and other businesses across the country. A Department of Homeland Security official with knowledge of the email said that agents had felt the pressure for more arrests and that the guidance took them by surprise. Agents were still digesting the long-term implications without a direct signal from the White House about how to carry out the new guidance, the official said. Mr King seemed to acknowledge that the new guidance would hurt the quest for higher numbers of arrests. 'We acknowledge that by taking this off the table, that we are eliminating a significant # of potential targets,' he wrote. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
4 hours ago
- Straits Times
Austria plans tougher gun laws after mass shooting at school
FILE PHOTO: People attend a memorial service at a main square in Graz, following a deadly shooting at a secondary school, Austria, June 11, 2025. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo The Austrian government plans to tighten national gun laws after enduring its worst school shooting, Chancellor Christian Stocker said in an interview broadcast on Saturday. Speaking to ORF radio, Stocker said officials aimed to set stricter eligibility rules for possession and purchase of arms after a 21-year-old Austrian man on Tuesday shot dead ten people at a high school in the city of Graz before killing himself. The planned measures would look at things such as age requirements and how to treat certain weapons, Stocker said in an excerpt of an interview due to air later in the day. The cabinet plans to agree the measures on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the chancellor's office said. The proposals include enhancing psychological expertise in schools, increasing police presence there, improving data exchange between authorities and tightening restrictions for individuals deemed to be a risk, newspaper Kronen Zeitung said. The spokesperson confirmed the details. Police described the shooter as an introvert and avid player of online shooting games who had largely withdrawn from the outside world before he planned the attack. Authorities have yet to establish what moved him to carry out the shooting. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
5 hours ago
- Straits Times
Two Australians shot in Indonesia's Bali island, one dead
JAKARTA - An Australian man was fatally shot and another Australian man injured in a shooting incident on the Indonesian island of Bali just after midnight on Saturday, local police told media. Bali police are currently hunting for two people believed to be involved in the shooting in a villa in the Badung regency on the southern side of the tourism island, spokesperson Ariasandy said, according to news website Identified only by their first names, Zivan R, 32, died at the scene, while Sanar G, 35, was seriously wounded and has been taken to intensive care at a hospital, Detik reported. Ariasandy said witness had provided descriptions of two people who fled from the scene on two motorcycles. He said the two were heard speaking English with an Australian accent. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
