Austrian government may ban far-right group

The Austrian government says it may ban a far-right group that received a donation from the main suspect in the New Zealand mosque attack.

Prosecutors said Martin Sellner, the head of the Identitarian Movement, known as IBO, in Austria, received 1,500 euros ($1690) in 2018 from a donor with the same name as the man charged with murder following the Christchurch attack.

Austria's chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, on Wednesday confirmed there was a financial link between the two men.

"We are now investigating whether we have a terrorist organization here," Chancellor Kurz said after a cabinet meeting.

"Radicalism of any kind must be eradicated, and all legal options should be taken," the conservative leader told a news conference.

"If it is indeed the case that it (IBO) is a terrorist organization, then of course there will be consequences for the organization."

Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian and self-proclaimed white supremacist, has been charged with murder in connection with attacks at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch in which 50 people were killed.

"Our position on this is very clear, no kind of extremism whatsoever - whether it's radical Islamists or right-wing extremist fanatics - has any place in our society," Kurz said.

The financial link to the group raises new questions about the rise of the far right in Austria — and casts a shadow over the Identitarian Movement's links to the minor coalition partner of the government, the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria.

Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the Freedom Party, this week declared himself opposed to extremism of any sort.

Strache has previously shared videos by the Austrian branch of the Identitarian Movement on his Facebook page. However, at a news conference Strache insisted: "The Freedom party has nothing to do with the Identitarians."

The Identitarians are a pan-European far-right movement hostile to multiculturalism, claiming to "defend" white Europeans against immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.The group often conducts public protests and is known in particular to be anti-immigration.

The Austrian chapter of the Identitarian movement was founded in 2012, based on the French movement Les Identitaires begun in 2003.

They have spread a conspiracy theory on the web known as "the great replacement", which sees immigrants as a threat to "white" Western culture, a theory included in Tarrant's "manifesto".

Demographic data disproves the notion that non-European immigrants could turn white Europeans into a minority.

Legal experts in Austria doubt whether the government could easily disband the Identitarian Movement, since a donation alone would not be enough to prove a formal link to a criminal.