Austrian public prosecutors filed terrorism-related charges Monday against a 21-year-old defendant who they are saying planned to perform an attack on one in every of superstar singer Taylor Swift’s live shows in Vienna in August 2024.
Vienna public prosecutors said in a press release that the unnamed defendant had declared allegiance to the Islamic State group by sharing propaganda material and videos via various messaging services.
Vienna prosecutors also accuse the defendant of getting “obtained instructions on the web for the development of a shrapnel bomb based on the explosive triacetone triperoxide” typically utilized by IS, and of getting produced a small amount of the explosive.
Prosecutors also say that the defendant had made “several attempts” to purchase weapons illegally outside the country and to bring them to Austria.
Vienna public prosecutors plan to proceed with a criminal case against the unnamed suspect in Wiener Neustadt, a town near the Austrian capital.
The spokesperson for the Vienna public prosecutors office confirmed to The Associated Press that the defendant is in custody. Austrian media identified the suspect as Beran A. and said he was arrested in August 2024.
Get every day National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
Austrian authorities cancelled three planned Taylor Swift shows in Vienna in August 2024 after they said they foiled an apparent plot to focus on the performances.
The U.S. provided intelligence that fed into the choice to cancel the live shows.
“The US has an everlasting deal with our counterterrorism mission. We work closely with partners all around the world to watch and disrupt threats. And in order a part of that work, america did share information with Austrian partners to enable the disruption of a threat to Taylor Swift’s live shows there in Vienna,” then-White House national security spokesman John Kirby said in August 2024.
© 2026 The Canadian Press