A 21-year-old Austrian accused of planning an Islamist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024 pleaded guilty as his trial opened on Tuesday, almost two years after authorities foiled the plot a day before the first of three planned shows.
The defendant, identified as Beran A, was arrested on August 7, 2024, the day before the first of three Swift concerts in Vienna. All three dates were cancelled, prompting Swift herself to write afterwards that the situation was “devastating,” Newswire reported, citing Reuters.
“I plead guilty in part,” Beran A told the presiding judge at the trial in Wiener Neustadt. Asked specifically if he pleaded guilty to the charges relating to the planned concert attack, he said: “Yes.”
Prosecutors allege Beran A used video instructions by the Islamic State to attempt to build a shrapnel bomb, produced a small quantity of the explosive triacetone peroxide and illegally tried to buy a machine gun and a hand grenade for the planned attack. He has been charged with multiple terrorism-related offences, membership of a criminal organisation and making a dangerous threat, and faces 10 to 20 years in prison if convicted.
His co-defendant, Slovak national Arda K, also faces charges relating to a separate planned attack in Istanbul. Both defendants covered their faces in court, as is common in German-speaking countries.
Prosecutors say the two — together with a third school friend — also planned attacks in the Middle East in March 2024. Each travelled to their designated city: Beran A to Dubai, Arda K to Istanbul and the third man to Mecca. Only the third man, who is believed to have stabbed a security official at the Grand Mosque, is thought to have carried out his plan; he is still in custody in Saudi Arabia.
The first of four scheduled trial days began on April 28; the last is set for May 21.
