Man sentenced to 15 years for planning Taylor Swift concert attack in Vienna

A Vienna court has sentenced 21-year-old Beran A. to 15 years in prison for plotting a terrorist attack targeting a Taylor Swift concert scheduled for August 9, 2024, in Vienna. His co-defendant, Arda K., also 21, received a 12-year sentence. The verdicts, delivered late Thursday by a jury at the Provincial Court of Lower Austria in Wiener Neustadt, are not yet final.

Beran A.'s sentence also accounts for his role in aiding and abetting a knife attack outside the Al-Haram mosque in Mecca, where a security guard was killed and four people were injured. This attack was carried out by Beran's former school friend, Hasan E., who is imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. The court determined that Beran A., Hasan E., and Arda K. were part of a terrorist cell planning multiple attacks in Mecca, Istanbul, and Dubai.

During their closing statements, both Beran and Arda expressed remorse for their actions. However, the focus of their defense, particularly regarding Beran's sentence, shifted from the thwarted Vienna concert plot to the alleged involvement in the Mecca stabbing. Beran A. admitted to planning the Vienna attack but denied providing psychological support to Hasan E. for the Mecca incident.

Both defendants attempted to portray Hasan E. as the primary instigator. The prosecution countered this narrative with evidence of phone conversations between Beran and Arda and Hasan E. hours before the Mecca attack. Beran A.'s lawyer, Anna Mair, argued that her client was not the leader or ideological mastermind but was instead influenced by Hasan E., whom she described as the "driving force" behind the attacks. Mair likened her client's radicalization to cult-like mechanisms, stating there was no evidence of joint planning.