2 days ago
24
An Austrian man who admitted planning a foiled attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of various mainly terrorism-related offences.
The state court in Wiener Neustadt on Thursday found the 21-year-old defendant, an Austrian citizen known only as Beran A – in line with Austrian privacy rules – guilty on charges including those related to the concert.
Beran A was arrested on 7 August 2024, the day before the first of three planned concerts by the US pop star in the Austrian capital.
All three dates were then cancelled, to the dismay of fans and Swift, who wrote afterwards that it was “devastating”. While crowds of disappointed fans sang together in Vienna at the time to console themselves, neither Swift nor any of her fans appeared at the trial in Wiener Neustadt, a town south of the capital.
Beran A 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 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 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.
