21-year-old who plotted terror attack on Taylor Swift’s Vienna shows gets 15 years in prison

An Austrian court on Thursday convicted a man of planning to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna nearly two years ago and sentenced him to 15 years in prison. The state court in Wiener Neustadt, south of the capital, found the 21-year-old defendant, an Austrian citizen known only as Beran A. under Austrian privacy rules, guilty on charges including those related to the concert.

The man was found guilty of more than a dozen charges, most of which were terrorism-related, at the Wiener Neustadt Regional Court. Because the charges were related to terrorism, he had faced a possible sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison.

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The co-defendant

A co-defendant, Arda K., also 21, received a 12-year sentence on similar charges in connection with the August 2024 incident. The two were found guilty of attempted murder, traveling for terrorist purposes, training for terrorist purposes, terrorist association, and criminal organisation. The jury needed six and a half hours of deliberations to reach its verdict.

The two defendants, along with a third man named Hasan E., allegedly planned simultaneous attacks in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates during Ramadan 2024, carried out in the name of Islamic State. Only Beran A. was charged in connection with the concert plot. Hasan E. was arrested and remains in pretrial detention in Saudi Arabia.

What was planned

Beran A.’s plan was to attack people outside Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium, where 65,000 people a night were expected to watch Swift. As many as 30,000 people could have gathered outside the stadium where he intended to carry out the attack with knives and bombs.

He planned to attack the crowd outside the stadium and then kill himself. He manufactured a small quantity of explosives using instructions found on the internet. Authorities also said he attempted to purchase weapons including a machine gun and a hand grenade.

Beran A. also networked with members of the Islamic State group ahead of the planned attack. Prosecutors said they discussed purchasing weapons and making bombs, and that the defendant also sought to illegally buy weapons in the days before the performance, as well as swearing allegiance to the militant group.

Authorities searched his apartment on August 7, 2024, and found bomb-making materials. The concerts were scheduled to begin the next day.

The guilty plea and final words

His defense attorney said Beran A. admitted to the charges related to the concert plot during the opening day of the trial last month. He pleaded guilty to conspiring to carry out an attack in April but not guilty to other charges.

In brief final words to the court before it adjourned to consider a verdict on Thursday, Beran A. said, “I would just like to say that I am sorry.” His lawyer, Anna Mair, said her client regretted the plot and considered it “the biggest mistake of his life.”

The cancellations and their impact

Tens of thousands of Swift fans had traveled to Austria for the three shows scheduled as part of her Eras Tour in August 2024. The concerts were canceled after the terrorist plot was uncovered, prompting fans to take to the streets of Vienna to come together in an act of communal support.

Nearly 200,000 people had been expected to attend the concerts.

Swift later broke her silence on the matter. “Walking onstage in London was a rollercoaster of emotions,” she wrote on social media. “Having our Vienna shows cancelled was devastating. 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. But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives.”

Other convictions tied to the plot

The case drew in suspects across several countries. A Berlin court previously convicted a Syrian teenager of contributing to the Islamic State-inspired plot. The 16-year-old defendant, named as Mohammad A., was found guilty of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state and supporting a terrorist act abroad. He was given an 18-month suspended sentence. Mohammad A., who was 14 at the time of the foiled attack, had been radicalised by IS propaganda on the internet.

Prosecutors said Mohammad A. helped the other would-be attackers by translating bomb-building instructions from Arabic.

The sentencing of Beran A. brings a measure of legal closure to one of the most high-profile terrorism cases.