Kujtim Fejzullai, the Islamist who carried out the terror attack in Vienna on Monday evening, would visit Macedonia each year, his family members say. Fejzullai was born in Austria, but his parents are ethnic Albanians who come from the village of Chelopek, near Tetovo.

He would come here each year with his family. He would usually stay in the apartment of his parents, but he also had an apartment of his own. We don’t know what he was doing there, a family member told Klan Macedonia TV.

He added that Fejzullai was detained in Turkey in 2018, where he was trying to cross over into Syria and join the Islamic State. Turkish authorities stopped him and handed him back to the Austrian authorities, and afterwards he attended a “de-radicalization program” which he apparently passed, and served a short prison sentence.

Austrian media, meanwhile, are interviewing the parents of Fejzullai, who say that the first realization they had of the attack was when Austrian police crashed through their door. They present their son as an aspiring football player who was well liked. His lawyer Nikolaus Rast said that he accepted the case to defend Fejzullai on behalf of his mother, who seemed like a thoroughly modern, Western woman, and had no indication that her son was serious about his Islamist tendencies.