Syrian teen convicted over Taylor Swift concert attack plot

A Berlin court has convicted a Syrian teenager for his role in a foiled Daesh-inspired plot targeting a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna.

Authorities had canceled three dates of Swift’s record-breaking "Eras" tour last summer after receiving warnings about the planned attack.

The 16-year-old defendant, identified by prosecutors as Mohammad A., was found guilty of “preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state” and “supporting a terrorist act abroad,” according to a court statement. He received an 18-month suspended sentence.

The court said Mohammad A., who was 14 when the attack was planned, had been “radicalised by IS propaganda on the internet.” He was found guilty of assisting another teenager in Austria with the plot.

"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. admitted his actions in full during the trial.

- Background -

Austrian authorities have detained three other teenage suspects in connection with the plot. The main suspect, an Austrian of North Macedonian descent, confessed to intending “to carry out an attack using explosives and knives,” according to Austrian intelligence.

Mohammad A. was first arrested in September last year in Frankfurt an der Oder, where he attended school at the time.

Taylor Swift addressed the cancelled concerts on social media, writing 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.”