Austrian man sentenced to 15 years for planning ISIS-inspired attack at Taylor Swift concert

A 21-year-old Austrian man who admitted plotting a terror attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna during the singer’s Eras Tour has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.The man was identified in court only as ‘Beran A’ under Austrian privacy laws. He pleaded guilty to planning an attack on one of Swift’s sold-out concerts at Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium in August 2024. The planned attack could have caused mass casualties.The concerts were cancelled shortly before they were due to begin after Austrian authorities received a tip-off from the CIA about the suspected plot. Nearly 200,000 fans had been expected to attend the three shows. Beran A was arrested days before the concerts. He had become radicalised online and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group. He had planned to use knives or homemade explosives to attack concertgoers. He also tried unsuccessfully to obtain illegal weapons, including a machine gun and a hand grenade.Court documents stated that he had used an Islamic State video as guidance while attempting to make explosives.During Thursday’s hearing in Wiener Neustadt, south of Vienna, Beran A apologised before the jury retired to consider its verdict.“I would just like to say that I am sorry,” he told the court.Court psychiatrist Peter Hoffmann said the accused showed no signs of mental illness and added there was “no psychiatric explanation” for his radicalisation.Beran A’s lawyer, Anna Mair, argued that her client was “not an ideological mastermind”.The case attracted international attention because it targeted Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour, one of the biggest concert tours in history.Swift later spoke publicly about the cancelled Vienna concerts and described the incident as narrowly avoiding “a massacre situation”. A documentary about the Eras Tour also revealed that the singer learned about the alleged bomb plot while travelling to Austria.A second 21-year-old man from Slovakia, identified as Arda K, was also on trial in the same case. Both men of being linked to an Islamic State cell.However, authorities said Arda K was not directly involved in the Taylor Swift concert plot.The pair were connected to plans for attacks in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, as well as other cities in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.Beran A denied separate allegations linked to those international plots but admitted involvement in the Vienna concert attack plan.