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An Austrian jury retired Thursday to weigh the verdict for 21-year-old Beran A, who admitted plotting a 2024 Vienna terror attack on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
The jury in Austria is now deliberating. A 21-year-old Austrian citizen identified only as Beran A, who has admitted plotting a jihadist attack on three sold-out Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna in August 2024, made his final statement to the court Thursday before the bench adjourned.
“I would just like to say that I am sorry,” Beran A told the panel. The trial is being held at the state court in Wiener Neustadt, south of Vienna.
BBC has been in the courtroom. The BBC’s on-the-ground summary of the prosecution case, the defense rebuttal, and the 20-year maximum sentence the defendant now faces reports that Beran A has pleaded guilty to the charges directly tied to the Swift plot and to being part of a terrorist organization, while denying involvement in a separate set of alleged plots in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The Swift concerts never happened. All three sold-out shows at Ernst Happel Stadium, set for August 2024 as part of the Eras Tour, were cancelled after authorities arrested Beran A on a tip from the CIA, leaving nearly 200,000 ticket-holders stranded.
Swift later described how close it came. An Eras Tour documentary captured the singer learning about the plot while flying to Austria, where she said the tour had “dodged a massacre situation.”
The scope of the alleged plot was considerable. Euronews’s opening-day trial coverage with prosecutors’ targeting estimates and the suspect’s stated intent reports that Austrian authorities believed the attack was meant to target up to 30,000 fans gathered outside the stadium each night, in addition to the 65,000 inside.
The prosecution framed his motivation as ideological. Officials said Beran A had been radicalized, had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State, and had tried, unsuccessfully, to acquire weapons illegally in the days before the first scheduled show.
Court psychiatrist Peter Hoffmann testified that Beran A showed no signs of mental illness. He told the panel there was “no psychiatric explanation” for the radicalization.
Defense counsel pushed back on the scope of the charges. Anna Mair, Beran A’s lawyer, told the court her client was not a ringleader and had been manipulated, arguing he should be held responsible only for the crimes he had personally committed.
The co-defendant story has its own thread. The Guardian’s summary of the closing arguments, Beran A’s apology, and the parallel case against the codefendant notes that Beran A’s co-defendant, identified only as Arda K, is accused of being part of the same Islamic State cell but is not charged in connection with the Swift plot.
Arda K issued his own apology. The 21-year-old Slovak asked the jury for a chance to “integrate into society” and acknowledged that “things should never have gone that far.”
A third man tied to the same alleged network is in custody abroad. Hasan E, who according to Austrian prosecutors went to school with both defendants, is in pretrial detention in Saudi Arabia, accused of stabbing a security guard and four others at the Grand Mosque in Mecca on March 11, 2024.
The codefendants admit traveling for the broader 2024 Ramadan plot. Beran A and Arda K traveled to Istanbul and Dubai respectively in early 2024, but both deny providing material support to Hasan E for the Mecca attack.
NYPost’s wire summary of the verdict timeline and the prosecutors’ call for guilty findings on all counts notes that experts still need to be heard and closing arguments completed before the Wiener Neustadt jury delivers its decision.
If convicted on all counts, both men face up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors told the jury this was their opportunity to send the message that “anyone who prepared a terrorist attack should face consequences.”
The cancellation is what most fans remember. In Vienna, in the days after the August arrests, thousands of Swifties gathered downtown to trade friendship bracelets in the absence of the shows the singer would later describe as the run that nearly ended in catastrophe.
