A 21-year-old Austrian man who admitted planning a terrorist 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 Arena in August 2024.
The planned attack could have caused heavy casualties.The concerts were canceled shortly before their start after Austrian authorities received a tip-off from the CIA about the suspected plot. Nearly 200,000 fans were expected to attend the three shows. Beran A was arrested days before the concerts.
He was radicalized online and pledged allegiance to ISIS. He was planning to use knives or homemade explosives to attack concertgoers.
He also tried unsuccessfully to obtain illegal weapons, including a machine gun and a grenade.He used an ISIS video as evidence while trying to make explosives, court documents said.During Thursday’s hearing in Wiener Neustadt, south of Vienna, Beran A apologized before the jury retired to consider its verdict.
“I would just like to say I’m sorry,” he told the court.Court psychiatrist Peter Hoffman said that the defendant did not show any signs of mental illness, and added that there was no “psychological explanation” for his conversion to extremism.Anna Mayer, Beran A’s lawyer, said her client “is not an ideological mastermind.”The case attracted international attention because it targeted Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour, one of the largest concert tours in history.Swift later spoke publicly about the canceled Vienna concerts and described the incident as narrowly avoiding a “situation of carnage.” A documentary about the Eras tour also revealed that the singer learned of the alleged bomb plot while traveling to Austria.Another 21-year-old man from Slovakia, Arda K, is also on trial in the same case. Both men are linked to an ISIS cell.However, authorities said Arda K was not directly involved in the Taylor Swift concert plot.The two men were linked to plans to launch attacks in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, as well as other cities in Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates.Beran A denied separate allegations linked to those international plots but admitted involvement in the plan to attack the concert in Vienna.
