A Berlin court on Tuesday, August 26th convicted a Syrian teenager of contributing to an Islamic State-inspired plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna.
Three dates in the U.S. pop megastar’s tour were cancelled last summer after authorities warned of the plot.
The 16-year-old defendant, named by prosecutors as Mohammad A., was found guilty of “preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state” and “supporting a terrorist act abroad,” the court said in a statement, handing out an 18-month suspended sentence.
Mohammad A., who was 14 at the time of the foiled attack, had been “radicalised by IS propaganda on the internet,” the court said.
He was found guilty of providing support to another teenager in Austria in plotting the atrocity. “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. made a full confession during the trial.
Austrian authorities have detained three suspects over the plot, which was thwarted with the help of U.S. intelligence—all of them teenagers at the time.
The main suspect is an Austrian with North Macedonian roots who has confessed that he “intended to carry out an attack using explosives and knives,” according to Austrian intelligence.
Police first took Mohammad A. into custody last September in the eastern city of Frankfurt an der Oder, where the then 15-year-old was attending school.
