An Austrian court on Thursday sentenced a 21-year-old who admitted planning a foiled Islamist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024 to 15 years in prison.
An Austrian court on Thursday sentenced a 21-year-old man who admitted planning a foiled Islamist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024 to 15 years in prison, finding him guilty of various, mainly terrorism-related offences.
Beran A, whose last name has not been made public in accordance with Austrian privacy rules, was arrested on August 7, 2024, the day before the first of three planned concerts by the U.S. pop star in the Austrian capital.
All three dates were then cancelled, to the dismay of fans and of Swift, who wrote afterwards that it was “devastating.” While crowds of disappointed fans sang together in Vienna then to console themselves, neither Swift nor any “Swifties” appeared at the trial in Wiener Neustadt, a town south of the capital.
Beran A, who is Austrian, pleaded guilty to charges related to the planned attack, which carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. He covered his face with a ring binder as he entered the courtroom to avoid being identifiable in pictures.
“I would just like to say that I am sorry,” he said in a final statement after closing arguments on Thursday.
Beran A was found to have tried but failed to illegally buy weapons including a machine gun and hand grenade, and followed instructions in an Islamic State video entitled “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” to produce a small amount of the explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP).
He was also accused at the same trial of plotting separately with two school friends to carry out a solo attack earlier in 2024 in separate Middle Eastern cities. He and co-defendant Arda K admitted they travelled to Dubai and Istanbul respectively to carry out attacks but then did not follow through.
Beran A told the court on the opening day of his trial last month that he roamed Dubai in March 2024 in search of victims to stab but then had a panic attack when he tried to strike. Upon his return to Vienna, he resolved to go further and eventually chose the concert as his target.
He and Arda K denied, however, providing moral support to the third man, who was arrested in Mecca on suspicion of stabbing a security official at the holy city’s Grand Mosque. He is still in custody in Saudi Arabia.
Closing arguments were so focused on that aspect that they did not even mention the Swift concert specifically. Beran A’s lawyer, Anna Mair, and Arda K’s lawyer, David Jodlbauer, repeated that their clients did not provide material support to the third man and if anything it was the other way around.
“Beran is not a leader. He is not an ideological mastermind,” Mair said in her summing up.
The jury, however, found him guilty on all but two of 15 points put to it, including providing moral support to the third man. It also found Arda K guilty of all charges and sentenced him to 12 years in prison.
