What we know about the sentence for man who plotted Taylor Swift terror attack

An Austrian court on Thursday sentenced a 21-year-old man who admitted planning a terror attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024 to 15 years in prison.

Beran A, whose last name has not been made public in accordance with Austrian privacy rules, was arrested on August 7, 2024, the day before the first of three planned concerts by the pop megastar in the Austrian capital.

All three dates were then cancelled, to the dismay of fans and of Swift, who wrote afterwards that it was “devastating.”

Neither Swift nor any of her fans appeared at the trial ​in ⁠Wiener Neustadt, a town south of the capital.

What was he convicted of?

Beran A pleaded guilty to charges related to the planned attack, which carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

He covered his face as he entered the courtroom to avoid being identifiable in pictures.

“I would ​just like ⁠to say that I am sorry,” he ‌said in a final statement before the jury retired. They later found him guilty on almost all charges.

Beran A was found to have tried but failed to illegally buy weapons including a machine gun and hand grenade, and followed instructions in an ‌Islamic State video entitled “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” to ‌produce a small amount of the explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP).

He was also accused of plotting with two school friends to carry out a solo attack earlier in 2024 in separate Middle Eastern cities. He and co-defendant Arda K admitted they travelled to Dubai and Istanbul respectively to carry out attacks but then did not follow ⁠through.

When his trial opened last month, Beran A told the court that he roamed Dubai in March 2024 in search of victims to stab but had a panic attack when he tried to strike. Upon his return to Vienna, he resolved to go further and eventually chose the concert as his target.

Defendant ‘burst into tears’

While neither ‌defendant showed much emotion in the courtroom, Beran A’s lawyer ⁠Anna Mair said that was not the case when they spoke privately.

“When he understood he had been found ⁠guilty in relation to Mecca, he burst into tears. I think that was simply because this big weight that these two years of being under investigation brought with ‌them fell from his shoulders,” she ​told reporters.

Arda K was found guilty unanimously on all charges ‌and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Both men’s lawyers ​said they had not yet decided whether to appeal.

With Reuters