Austrian intelligence services said on Thursday that the 19-year-old Islamist arrested on Wednesday was planning a suicide attack at one of American star Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna to “kill a large number of people.”
In the name of “safety,” organizers have canceled all three shows scheduled for this week in the Austrian capital, leaving fans in disarray.
The main suspect “made a full confession and said he intended to carry out an attack using explosives and bladed weapons,” the director of the intelligence services (DSN), Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, said at a press conference.
“His goal was to kill himself and a large number of people, either today or tomorrow, during the concert.”
The second suspect is a “17-year-old young man”, “employed for several days by a subcontracting company which was to provide services to the stadium during the concert” this Thursday, he added, specifying that he was “in the stadium area at the time of the investigation”.
According to Conservative Interior Minister Gerhard Karner, a “tragedy could be avoided” while “the situation was very serious”, particularly in light of the “attack” very recently “during a thematic event” by Taylor Swift where three little girls were killed in Great Britain.
During the searches, explosives and detonators were seized.
Swifties Dismay
According to the Director General of Public Security Franz Ruf, “a clear social change has taken place among the two defendants.”
The main suspect, an Austrian, was from North Macedonia, like the perpetrator of the only Islamic attack to hit Austria in 2020, which killed four people. He had “flagrantly changed his appearance and adapted it to the propaganda of the Islamic State”, while the second, an Austrian Islamist of Turkish or Croatian origin, had “broken up with his girlfriend shortly before”, he noted.
The authorities confirmed that they had been put on the trail of the main suspect thanks to information received “from foreign partners”, but they refused to confirm that it came from the United States, as the American press claims.
The authorities had promised to strengthen security measures and checks at the entrance to the stadium, but this was clearly not enough to reassure the organisers.
The Austrian government says it “understands” their decision.
“We have done everything humanly possible to make the event happen,” Ruf said, as the cancellation caused immense frustration among the tens of thousands of fans expected to attend.
The 34-year-old singer was due to perform in Vienna from Thursday as part of her “Eras” tour, the European leg of which began in Paris in May.
After France, she visited Sweden, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Poland, each time with a notable impact on the local economy.
In Austria, more than 170,000 spectators were expected for an estimated revenue of around 100 million euros, according to figures provided by the APA press agency.