Austria Outlaws Hezbollah, Bans All Activities Linked to the Group

German special police leave the El-Irschad (Al-Iraschad e.V.) center in Berlin, Germany, April 30, 2020, after Germany has banned Iran-backed Hezbollah on its soil and designated it a terrorist organization. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke
German special police leave the El-Irschad (Al-Iraschad e.V.) center in Berlin, Germany, April 30, 2020, after Germany has banned Iran-backed Hezbollah on its soil and designated it a terrorist organization. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke
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Austria Outlaws Hezbollah, Bans All Activities Linked to the Group

German special police leave the El-Irschad (Al-Iraschad e.V.) center in Berlin, Germany, April 30, 2020, after Germany has banned Iran-backed Hezbollah on its soil and designated it a terrorist organization. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke
German special police leave the El-Irschad (Al-Iraschad e.V.) center in Berlin, Germany, April 30, 2020, after Germany has banned Iran-backed Hezbollah on its soil and designated it a terrorist organization. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Austria banned Hezbollah in its entirety this week, joining other European countries in outlawing the Lebanese group’s military arm.

The ban outlaws all Hezbollah-linked activities in Austria, however doesn’t include boycotting the group's political wing in Lebanon.

The ban forbids raising any pro-Hezbollah slogans and symbols or supporting.

“This is a very clear signal,” said Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, after the Council of Ministers approved the proposal to include Hezbollah in a law banning the use of certain symbols.

“This step reflects reality. The group itself makes no distinction between the military and the political arm,” the minister said.

Schallenberg said Hezbollah “poses a serious threat to the stability in the region and the security of Israel. Israel’s right to exist must not be called into question.”

In April, Germany banned all Hezbollah activities in the country and designated it as a “terrorist” organization.

However, it maintained ties with Hezbollah in Lebanon, adding that boycotting it requires a unified European decision.

The European Union (EU) designates Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and makes a distinction between the military arm and the political arm that is part of the social and political fabric of the Lebanese community.



Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
TT

Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.