Austrian pleads guilty to ISIL-planned attack on Taylor Swift concert

A 21-year-old Austrian man has pleaded guilty to planning an attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna that was foiled the day before the event in August 2024.

As his trial opened in the Austrian capital on Tuesday, Beran A admitted the charges relating to the conspiracy to mount the attack. Three dates in Swift’s record-breaking tour were cancelled when authorities warned of the plot.

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The defendant is also accused, alongside Slovak national Arda K, of planning attacks in the Middle East that they did not go through with, and of providing moral support to a third man ‌who has been arrested on suspicion of carrying out a knife attack in Mecca.

Beran A, Arda K and the third man, all school friends, had planned to carry out one attack each ⁠in Dubai, Istanbul and Mecca in March 2024.

While each travelled to the designated cities, ⁠only the third man launched an attack. He was ⁠arrested on suspicion of stabbing a security official at Mecca’s Grand Mosque and remains in custody in Saudi Arabia.

Arda K pleaded guilty to travelling to Istanbul with the intention of carrying out an attack. Beran A admitted to travelling to Dubai for the same reason. They pleaded not guilty, however, to providing moral support to the third ‌man.

Beran A told the court he had sought out potential victims while in Dubai, including tourists and soldiers, but then could not bring himself to stab anybody as he had a “panic attack” each time.

“I thought, ‘I have ‌to ‌carry out the attack; at the same time, I’m afraid of dying’,” he told the court.

Prosecutors also accuse Beran A of using video instructions issued by ISIL (ISIS) on how to make a shrapnel bomb, producing the explosive triacetone peroxide and illegally trying to buy weapons, including a machine ⁠gun and hand grenade, for the planned attack on the concert.

He has been charged with various, mainly “terrorism-related” offences, and faces 10 to 20 years in prison if convicted.

The hearing was the first of five trial days scheduled to end on May 28. The presiding judge said she hoped a ruling could be reached by then.

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