BERLIN: German prosecutors said Friday they had filed charges against a Syrian youth and alleged Islamic State group supporter linked to a 2024 attack plot on a Vienna concert by US pop megastar Taylor Swift.
The suspect, only partially named as Mohammad A., was accused of supporting a foreign terrorist organisation and of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, federal prosecutors said.
He had, as a juvenile, started following IS ideology from April last year at the latest and had from July been in contact with a young adult from Austria who was planning a bomb attack at one of Swift’s concerts, they said.
“The accused assisted the young adult in his preparations by, among other things, translating bomb-making instructions from Arabic and establishing contact with an IS member abroad via the internet,“ federal prosecutors said in a statement.
“The accused also provided the young adult with a template for the oath of allegiance to IS, which the young adult used to join the organisation.”
Police first took Mohammad A. into custody last September in the eastern city of Frankfurt an der Oder, where the then 15-year-old went to school, but later released him.
The federal prosecutors office in the western city of Karlsruhe said Friday that the charges were laid on June 17 in a Berlin higher regional court, which will now decide on their admissibility.
Three Vienna shows that were part of Swift’s record-breaking “Eras” tour were cancelled last summer after authorities warned of a terror plot by IS sympathisers.
Police detained three suspects, including a 19-year-old Austrian with North Macedonian roots, over the alleged attack threat, with the United States saying it shared intelligence to assist in the investigation.
Swift later wrote on social media platform Instagram that “the reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many had planned on coming to those shows”.
