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A 21-year-old man has pleaded guilty in an Austrian court over a jihadist plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna nearly two years ago, which led to shows by the US megastar in the country being scrapped.
The plan to kill onlookers massing outside the venue was thwarted at the 11th hour but Austrian authorities still cancelled Swift’s three scheduled performances in August 2024.
The singer’s fans, who had flown to Austria from across the globe to attend a concert on her record-setting Eras Tour, were crushed but rallied to turn Vienna into a citywide trading post for Swifties’ trademark friendship bracelets and singalongs.
“Having our Vienna shows cancelled was devastating,” Swift wrote in a statement posted to Instagram two weeks later. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows.”
The defendant, an Austrian national identified as Beran A in line with Austrian privacy rules, pleaded guilty to charges relating to the concert plot.
Beran A is also accused, along with a Slovak national, Arda K, of planning attacks in the Middle East they did not go through with, and of providing moral support to a third man, identified as Hasan E, who has been arrested on suspicion of carrying out a knife attack in Mecca.
“I plead guilty in part,” Beran A said at the start of his questioning by the presiding judge. Asked if he pleaded guilty to the charges linked to the planned concert attack, he said: “Yes.”
Anna Mair, his defence attorney, said her client, who has been in jail since his arrest in August 2024, was contrite. “Of course, he deeply regrets it all,” Mair said later outside the court. “It is also due to the long period of detention that he says it was the biggest mistake of his life.”
Beran A faces charges including terrorist offences and membership of a terrorist organisation, and his attorney previously said he planned to plead guilty to most of the charges. He could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
By sharing Islamic State propaganda through various messaging services and other offences, he participated and “openly aligned himself” with IS, prosecutors said.
Beran A and Arda K, along with a third man, all school friends, allegedly planned to carry out simultaneous attacks in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates during Ramadan in 2024 in the name of IS.
Only Beran A was charged in connection with the Taylor Swift plot.
He allegedly planned to target onlookers gathered outside Ernst Happel stadium – up to 30,000 each night, with another 65,000 inside the venue – with knives or homemade explosives. The suspect hoped to “kill as many people as possible”, authorities said in 2024. The US provided intelligence that fed into the decision to cancel the concerts.
Beran A also allegedly networked with other IS members before the planned attack. Prosecutors said they discussed buying weapons and making bombs, and that the defendant also sought to illegally buy weapons in the days before the performance. In addition, he allegedly swore allegiance to the militant group.
Prosecutors accuse Beran A of using IS video instructions on how to make a shrapnel bomb, producing a small amount of the explosive triacetone triperoxide and illegally trying to buy weapons, including a machinegun and hand grenade for the planned attack.
Authorities searched his flat on 7 August 2024 and found bomb-making material. The concerts were scheduled to begin the next day.
Prosecutors also allege the three men had planned to each carry out an attack in the Middle East before the Swift concerts, in March 2024: Beran A in Dubai, Arda K in Istanbul and the third man, Hasan E, in Mecca.
While each travelled to his designated city, only Hasan E is believed to have launched an attack – he was arrested on suspicion of stabbing a security guard at Mecca’s Grand Mosque on 11 March 2024 and is still in custody in Saudi Arabia.
Arda K pleaded guilty to travelling to Istanbul with the intention of carrying out a militant attack, as did Beran A in relation to his trip to Dubai. They pleaded not guilty, however, to providing moral support to the third man, arguing he was already determined and the lead force behind those plans.
The trial is being held in Wiener Neustadt, about an hour south of Vienna. Tuesday is the first of four scheduled hearing days; the last is 21 May and it is unclear whether more will be needed.
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.
The Vienna plot drew comparisons to a 2017 UK attack by a suicide bomber at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, which killed 22 people. The bomb detonated at the end of Grande’s concert as thousands of young fans were leaving, becoming the deadliest extremist attack in the UK in recent years.
The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report
