A Syrian teenager has gone on trial in Berlin accused of being an accomplice in a foiled ISIS-inspired plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna last year.
The 15-year-old, named only as Mohammad A, allegedly helped a would-be attacker translate bomb instructions and established contact with a member of ISIS abroad, according to the charges against him.
Federal prosecutors believe the teenager, who attended school in Germany, was helping a man named as Beran A, who they say planned to kill himself and others at a show in Austria expected to attract up to 200,000 attendees last August.
Berlin’s superior court of justice granted a request by Mohammad’s defence lawyers to hear the case behind closed doors, due to his age and ‘heated’ press coverage around the trial.
Spectators at the Berlin Higher Regional Court were excluded even before the charges were read on Monday, a court spokeswoman said. Seven days of hearings are planned, ending on August 26.
The Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office told the dpa press agency that main suspect Beran A, who remains in custody, is still under investigation. Investigators in Austria are not aware of any other suspected accomplices.
The three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna were cancelled a day before the first show as authorities swooped on two suspects, before arresting a third two days later.
Swift performs onstage during the Germany leg of her Eras tour, in Munich, July 24, 2024
Police officers talk with fans of Taylor Swift outside Wembley Stadium on August 15, 2024, after the plot in Vienna was foiled
Mohammad, who was 14 at the time, was arrested on the day the concerts were cancelled, his name allegedly found among Beran’s contacts.
Prosecutors believe that Mohammad started following Islamic State ideology in April 2024 at the latest, texting an oath of loyalty to join the organisation.
He attended a school in the German city of Frankfurt an der Oder, near the Polish border.
The Syrian teenager is said to have been in contact with Beran A, an Austrian citizen, from mid-July until August 2024, according to Germany’s prosecutor general.
Authorities claim Beran A planned to ‘kill as many people as possible’.
Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, the head of state protection and intelligence at the Austrian interior ministry, said at the time that Beran A intended to ‘kill himself and a large crowd of people’ with the attack.
The CIA, which provided intelligence to the Austrian authorities to help foil the plot, said in August that the suspects’ plans were ‘advanced’.
Deputy director David Cohen noted there were ‘tens of thousands of people at this concert, I am sure many Americans’.
‘The Austrians were able to make those arrests because the agency and our partners in the intelligence community provided them information about what this ISIS-connected group was planning to do,’ he revealed.
Mr Cohen did not explain how the agency learned of the plot.
Organisers cancelled the shows on August 7 last year, the day before the first show, warning about a ‘planned terrorist attack’.
Austrian authorities had only arrested two of the suspects that day. A third was arrested two days later.
Beran A allegedly planned to orchestrate an attack at a Taylor Swift concert last year
File photo. Fighters from the Islamic State group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle in the northern city of Mosul, Iraq (2014)
Austria’s coalition government in June agreed on a plan to enable police to monitor suspects’ secure messaging in order to thwart militant attacks, ending what security officials have said is a rare and dangerous blind spot for a European Union country.
Taylor Swift said at the time that having to cancel the Vienna shows was ‘devastating’.
‘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 wrote.
‘But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives.’
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