Vienna (AFP) – A 21-year-old man pleaded guilty on Tuesday in an Austrian court over a jihadist plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert, which led to shows by the US megastar in the Alpine nation being scrapped in 2024. Three dates in Swift’s record-breaking “Eras” tour were cancelled in the summer of 2024 after authorities warned of the plot.
Beran A. was led into the courtroom by masked police personnel at the start of his trial on terror offenses and other charges in a court in Wiener Neustadt, outside Vienna. “He pleads guilty to all except attempted murder,” his lawyer Anna Mair told AFP. The Austrian has been in detention since his arrest in August 2024. He is accused of having been a member of a terror organization from May 2023 “by planning and preparing a terrorist attack on the concert of singer Taylor Swift,” prosecutors have said.
By sharing Islamic State (IS) propaganda through various messaging services and other offenses, he participated and “openly aligned himself” with IS, they added. Planning the attack on the concert, he allegedly tried to get weapons and worked on making a shrapnel bomb “specific to IS attacks” and received instructions from other IS members on handling explosives, according to prosecutors.
He is also alleged to have been involved in other attack plans abroad, including in Dubai and Istanbul, though those attacks never materialized. Another 21-year-old, Arda K., is standing trial together with Beran A., according to Austrian news agency APA. The duo, together with a third Austrian, Hasan E. imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, are accused of forming a “highly dangerous IS terror cell” planning to carry out several attacks in the name of IS, prosecutors say.
Hasan E. is accused of stabbing a security official in Mecca in 2024 and injuring four others before he was overpowered. Austria’s embassy is in contact with him and following ongoing judicial proceedings, according to the foreign ministry. Beran A. and Arda K. are accused of encouraging Hasan E. ahead of the attack — an accusation Beran A. denies, his lawyer Mair said.
The trial of the two defendants has been scheduled to last four days. Beran A., who was arrested just two days before the first Swift concert was to take place, faces up to 20 years in prison on the charges. The concert plot was thwarted with the help of US intelligence. Swift later wrote on social media that “the reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many had planned on coming to those shows.” Last year, a Berlin court convicted a Syrian teenager of contributing to the plot to attack the Swift concert. The 16-year-old was given an 18-month suspended sentence.
© 2024 AFP
