The lawyer of the man suspected of planning a terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna is trying to downplay the seriousness of his intended actions by implying that her client was only “playing with ideas,” and “just wanted to be cool.”
U.S. pop star Taylor Swift’s three scheduled concerts in Vienna were cancelled last week following the arrest of the 19-year-old man, an Austrian with North Macedonian roots, in the town of Ternitz, an hour’s drive from Vienna.
As we reported, the man, identified as Beran A. in Austrian media, had pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) terror organisation and had been planning a terror attack at one of the concerts. He had an accomplice, his “best friend and neighbour,” a 17-year-old with Turkish-Croatian roots, who was employed a few days prior by a facility management company providing services at the venue for the concerts. He was detained in Vienna. A third suspect, an 18-year-old Iraqi citizen, who “comes from the social environment” of the main suspect, was also arrested.
Beran A.’s lawyer, Ina-Christin Stiglitz said her client had not really intended to carry out a serious attack. “It was just playing with ideas. He says the bomb wasn’t of good enough quality, it wouldn’t have worked.” He had wanted to try out a bomb “in the forest at most,” and at no time did he intend to kill people, she added. The man had only been involved with ISIS for the past month and was interested in the organisation’s ideas but did not identify with them. He recently grew a long beard, because “he wanted to be cool,” claimed the lawyer. Of the knives and machetes that were found in his home, she said: “He ordered them on Amazon because he liked them.” She also claimed that “he would not have had the heart to carry out an attack,” because he is “like a child, immature, clueless.”
Beran A.’s initial confession tells a very different story. According to daily Heute, he had planned to drive a car to the front of the Ernst Happel Stadium, the venue of the concert. He wanted to pretend to be a police officer. The investigators found a fake blue flashing light and a siren in his house.
The man wanted to kill as many people as possible outside the stadium. About 65,000 spectators were expected inside the stadium, and as many as 30,000 onlookers outside.
Beran A. planned to ram into the crowd with his car, then kill more people by stabbing them, and finally, he wanted to detonate a homemade bomb and blow himself up as well. All the materials needed to carry out the bloodbath were found in his home during a raid by the police: chemicals, machetes, detonators.
