7 OCT 2026Vienna Shooting | Nice Church Stabbing
7 OCT 2026 Samuel Paty beheaded
At about 5pm on 16 October 2020, history and geography teacher Samuel Paty, 47, was killed and beheaded near his school, the Collège du Bois d'Aulne, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, north-west of Paris. Earlier that month he had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a class on freedom of expression, telling students who might be offended that they could look away or leave. Anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard said the attacker asked pupils to point Paty out, and afterwards posted a photo of the victim online. Police shot him dead.
The attacker was Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old of Chechen origin (named by the BBC and AP). President Emmanuel Macron said Paty was killed because he "taught freedom of expression" (BBC). The campaign against Paty began when a 13-year-old pupil falsely claimed she had been excluded from the lesson, which she had not in fact attended.
On 20 December 2024, France's special anti-terrorism court convicted eight people. Naïm Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, friends of the attacker, received 16 years each for complicity in murder. Brahim Chnina, the pupil's father, received 13 years. Preacher Abdelhakim Sefrioui received 15 years for organising the online hate campaign (AP). Paty's sister Gaëlle Paty said: "Hearing the word 'guilty' — that's what I needed."
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Introduction
Nice — 29 October 2020
On the morning of 29 October 2020, a man with a kitchen knife walked into the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Nice.
Three people were murdered. Nadine Vincent, a 60-year-old woman at prayer, was found with her throat cut. The sacristan, Vincent Loqués, 55, a father of two, was killed the same way. Simone Barreto Silva, 44, a Franco-Brazilian care worker and mother, was stabbed repeatedly, fled the church and died in a nearby restaurant.
The attacker was Brahim Aouissaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian. He had landed on Lampedusa on 20 September 2020, spent weeks in Italian quarantine and been given an order to leave Italy. He was not known to French intelligence. Police shot him as he came at them with the knife, shouting, but he survived.
Five years later, in a special assize court in Paris, he admitted the attack. He said he did not remember the hour. He also said he was taking revenge on Westerners who, he said, kill Muslims every day.
Vienna — 2 November 2020
At 8pm on Monday, 2 November 2020, a man opened fire in Vienna's nightlife quarter, the Bermuda Triangle, hours before a coronavirus lockdown was due to begin.
He was Kujtim Fejzulai, 20, born in Vienna to Macedonian parents, a dual Austrian and North Macedonian citizen. He was carrying an automatic rifle, a handgun and a machete, and wearing a fake explosive vest. He had posted a photograph of himself with the weapons on Instagram before he left.
Four people, two men and two women, were murdered. More than twenty others were wounded, including a police officer who tried to stop him. Nine minutes after the first shots, police shot Fejzulai dead.
Islamic State claimed him the next day, through its Amaq agency, as a soldier of the caliphate.
The year before
In September 2018 Fejzulai had tried to cross from Turkey into Syria to join Islamic State. Turkey held him and sent him back. In April 2019 a Vienna court sentenced him to 22 months for membership of a terrorist organisation and for spreading propaganda. Because he was treated as a young adult he served two-thirds. He was released on 5 December 2019, on parole until December 2022, and placed in a deradicalisation programme that was still running on the night he walked into the Bermuda Triangle.
Government Response
Nice
France, that morning
President Emmanuel Macron went to the basilica and called it an Islamist terrorist attack. He said France would not give in to terrorism, and that he would protect schools and places of worship by doubling the presence of security forces. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said France was at war against an ideology, Islamist ideology.
The National Assembly observed a silence. The national security alert was raised to its highest level. The attack was the third in less than two months that French authorities attributed to Islamic extremists. Two weeks earlier a teacher, Samuel Paty, had been murdered after a lesson that used the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
The sentence
On 26 February 2025 the Paris special assize court convicted Aouissaoui of three terrorist murders. Presiding judge Christophe Petiteau called him an extremely dangerous man whose intention to kill could not be disputed, and said the risk of reoffending was too high. The court imposed life imprisonment with an incompressible safety period (perpétuité réelle), the heaviest sentence in French law. Salah Abdeslam received the same form of sentence for 13 November 2015.
Australia
Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the attack "despicable" and "disgraceful". "Not only are they an attack on the individuals and their families, but they are an attack on liberty," he said. "We stand with President Macron and the Government of France."
Vienna
The next morning
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz addressed the country. He said the attack was definitely an Islamist terrorist attack, and that it grew from hatred for Austria's basic values, its way of life, and a democracy in which all people have equal rights and dignity.
Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said Fejzulai had deceived the judicial system's deradicalisation programme to secure his release, and that the system should be re-evaluated. Police searched 18 properties and detained 14 people connected to him. Early reports of a second gunman were withdrawn, and Nehammer said the evidence gave no indication that anyone else had pulled a trigger.
DERAD, the organisation that ran his post-release programme, later said he had never been assessed as deradicalised. Both accounts are on the record: the minister said the programme had been deceived, and the provider said it had never certified him as safe.
The helpers
Six men went to trial in October 2022. None was accused of being on the street with Fejzulai. On 1 February 2023 the Vienna state court convicted four of them as accomplices to murder and on terrorist offences. Heydayatollah Z, whose DNA was on the rifle and who had lived in Fejzulai's flat, was sentenced to life. Adam M, who admitted providing a gun for €500, was sentenced to life. Burak K, who visited Fejzulai hours before the attack, received 20 years. Ishak F, who had been in prison with him and knew he had talked about an attack, received 19 years. Two others were acquitted of the murder-accomplice counts and convicted of lesser terror offences.
What the state admitted
The interior ministry was criticised for failing to keep watch on a man it already knew, and the government later admitted mishandling intelligence connected to the attack. It then passed an anti-terror law that widened surveillance and created a new offence of religiously motivated crime. That law was itself criticised.
Summary
A man who had crossed the Mediterranean weeks earlier walked into a church in Nice and murdered three people. The President of France called it an Islamist terrorist attack and said the country would not give in. Five years later a Paris court gave him the heaviest sentence French law allows. He said he was taking revenge, and the court found his intention to kill could not be disputed.
In Vienna, a 20-year-old local man, already convicted of trying to join Islamic State and out on parole, shot four people dead in the city centre before being shot dead by police nine minutes later. The Chancellor called it Islamist terrorism. The Interior Minister said the deradicalisation programme had been deceived, while the programme said it had never certified him. Four men who had helped him beforehand were later given long sentences, and the government admitted the intelligence had been mishandled and changed the law.
The 2023 verdicts are on the court record, and the minister's briefing is on the record.
You be the judge.
