A 21-year-old man is facing terrorism-related charges for allegedly planning an attack on one of Taylor Swift's sold-out concerts in the Austrian capital, prosecutors announced Monday.
Vienna public prosecutors said the unnamed defendant declared allegiance to the Islamic State group by distributing propaganda material and videos through multiple messaging platforms. The suspect, identified in Austrian media as Beran A., has been in custody since his arrest in August 2024, a spokesperson for the Vienna public prosecutors' office said.
The charges stem from an elaborate scheme that authorities say could have claimed tens of thousands of lives. According to the CIA's deputy director, David Cohen, the plotters "were plotting to kill a huge number — tens of thousands of people at this concert, including I am sure many Americans — and were quite advanced in this."
Prosecutors allege the defendant sought out online instructions for building a shrapnel bomb using triacetone triperoxide, an explosive commonly associated with IS operations, and managed to produce a small quantity of the substance. He also made "several attempts" to illegally purchase weapons from outside Austria and smuggle them into the country, according to prosecutors.
The criminal case is set to proceed in Wiener Neustadt, a town just outside Vienna.
The conspiracy first came to light in August 2024, when U.S. intelligence agencies passed information to their Austrian counterparts. The CIA's tip-off enabled Austrian authorities to move quickly and arrest the main suspect and a 17-year-old on Aug. 6. A third suspect, 18, was taken into custody two days later. Their identities have not been publicly released under Austrian privacy laws.
According to Austrian officials, the then-19-year-old main suspect had planned to strike outside the Ernst Happel Stadium, where as many as 30,000 fans were expected to gather, using knives or homemade explosives. An additional 65,000 concertgoers would have been inside the venue. A raid of the suspect's home turned up chemical substances and technical devices.
Then-White House national security spokesman John Kirby confirmed U.S. involvement at the time, stating, "The United States did share information with Austrian partners to enable the disruption of a threat to Taylor Swift's concerts there in Vienna."
Concert organizer Barracuda Music pulled the plug on the three-night Vienna run, which had been slated to begin Aug. 8, citing the proximity of the arrests to showtime. The cancellations devastated fans who had traveled from around the world for the Eras Tour performances.
Swift addressed the ordeal publicly only after completing the European leg of her tour.
"Having our Vienna shows cancelled was devastating," she wrote on Instagram. "The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows."
She said at the time she was thankful to the authorities who intervened: "Thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives."
Swift also explained her silence in the weeks following the foiled plot. "Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows," she wrote.
Cohen, speaking at the annual Intelligence and National Security Summit in Maryland in August 2024, praised the agency's role in preventing the attack, noting that many counterterrorism victories never become public.
"I can tell you within my agency, and I'm sure in others, there were people who thought that was a really good day for Langley," he said, referencing CIA headquarters. "And not just the Swifties in my workforce."