Austrian who planned attack on Swift concert jailed

An Austrian court found a 21-year-old man, who admitted that he planned to prevent an Islamist attack on Taylor Swift’s concert in Vienna in 2024, guilty of various crimes, especially terrorism-related, and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

Beran A, whose surname was not disclosed due to Austrian privacy rules, was arrested on August 7, 2024, the first of three concerts planned by the US pop star in the Austrian capital.

All three dates were later canceled, to the dismay of fans and Swift, who later wrote that it was “devastating.”

Neither Swift nor any “Swifties” attended the hearing in Wiener Neustadt, a town south of the capital, as crowds of disappointed fans sang together to console themselves in Vienna.

Austrian Beran A pleaded guilty to charges that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison regarding the planned attack.

While entering the courtroom, he covered his face with a wire file so that his identity could not be seen in the photographs.

“I just want to say I’m sorry,” he said in his final statement after the close of arguments on Thursday.

Beran A was found to have attempted but failed to purchase illegal weapons, including a machine gun and grenade, and followed instructions in an Islamic State video titled “Make a bomb in your mother’s kitchen” to produce a small amount of explosives.

He was also accused at the same hearing of separately conspiring with two schoolmates to carry out a lone attack in different cities in the Middle East in early 2024.

He and the other defendant, Arda K, admitted that they went to Dubai and Istanbul respectively to carry out the attack, but did not take action afterwards.

Beran A told the court on the opening day of his trial last month that he was looking for victims to stab in Dubai in March 2024, but had a panic attack when he attempted to attack.

After returning to Vienna, he decided to go even further and finally chose the concert as his goal.

However, he and Arda K refused to provide moral support to the third man arrested on suspicion of stabbing a security guard at the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

He is currently detained in Saudi Arabia.

Closing arguments were so focused on this issue that they didn’t even specifically mention the Swift concert.

Beran A’s lawyer, Anna Mair, and Arda K’s lawyer, David Jodlbauer, repeated that their clients did not provide financial support to the third party, in fact, it was the opposite.

“Beran is not a leader. He is not an ideological genius,” Mair said in his summary.

But the jury found him guilty on all but two of the 15 counts he was given, including providing moral support to a third person.

He found Arda K guilty of all charges and sentenced him to 12 years in prison.