The State Police are conducting a house-to-house check of the estimated 4,600 Arabs presently living in Austria. Special squads visited about 900 Arabs last week to examine their visas and residence permits. Many were said to have no valid papers.
The check was ordered by the government following renewed threats against the lives of Austrian political figures by an extremist Palestinian group, Al Asifa. Al Asifa was implicated in the attack on the Jewish community center and synagogue here last August in which two persons were killed and 18 were wounded, and in the assassination of Heinz Nittel, a Vienna City Council member, last May.
Arab Ambassadors accredited to Austria were informed of the measures in advance by Chancellor Bruno Kreisky last week. Apart from the diplomatic corps, most Arab residents of Austria are either students or workers, chiefly newspaper vendors. One of the two Palestinian Arabs convicted for the community center attack has been a student in Austria for the past two years.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
