Berlin, Germany – A Berlin court on Tuesday convicted a Syrian teenager of contributing to an Islamic State-inspired plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna.
Three dates in the pop megastar’s record-breaking Eras Tour were canceled last summer after authorities warned of the plot.
The 16-year-old defendant, named by prosecutors as Mohammad A., was found guilty of “preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state” and “supporting a terrorist act abroad”, the court said in a statement.
He was given an 18-month suspended sentence.
National Guard troops begin carrying weapons in Washington DC
Late Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s memoir set for publication
Mohammad A., who was 14 at the time of the foiled attack, had been “radicalized by IS propaganda on the internet”, the court said.
He was found guilty of providing support to another teenager in Austria in plotting the atrocity.
“The defendant sent him a video with instructions on how to build a bomb and put him in contact with an IS member,” the court said.
Mohammad A. made a full confession during the trial.
Austrian authorities have detained three suspects over the plot, which was thwarted with the help of US intelligence – all of them teenagers at the time.
The main suspect is an Austrian with North Macedonian roots who has confessed that he “intended to carry out an attack using explosives and knives”, according to Austrian intelligence.
Police first took Mohammad A. into custody last September in the eastern city of Frankfurt an der Oder, where the then 15-year-old went to school.
Swift later wrote on social media that “the reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many had planned on coming to those shows”.
