Lawyer for suspect in Taylor Swift concert attack plot in Vienna

Vienna:

The lawyer for the main suspect in a foiled plot to carry out an attack on Taylor Swift’s Vienna concert on Sunday has tried to downplay the seriousness of the plan, saying her client was just “playing around with ideas.”

Swift’s three planned concerts this week were canceled after Austrian authorities uncovered a plot allegedly led by a 19-year-old to carry out an Islamic State-inspired suicide attack at a football stadium where tens of thousands of fans planned to attend the concerts. .

Austrian investigators said the young man had recently sworn an oath to ISIS and made a full confession after police raided his home, seizing chemicals, machetes and other devices that the plotters planned to use in a bomb attack.

Lawyer Ina-Christin Stiglitz told Reuters that the young man had only been involved with ISIS in the last month.

“That interested him,” she said, suggesting that her client had not actually intended to carry out a serious attack.

“It was just playing with ideas,” she said. “He says the bomb wasn’t of sufficient quality, it wouldn’t have worked.”

He researched online how to build a bomb, she added.

Among three other teenagers Austrian police detained during the investigation was a 17-year-old, who Stiglitz said his client described as his “best friend and neighbor.”

Neighbors of the 19-year-old in the small town of Ternitz expressed shock at his arrest, describing him as reserved but friendly. One of the few hints pointing to potential radicalization is that he recently grew a long beard, they said.

Responding to a question about why he changed his appearance, his lawyer said: “He wanted to be cool.”

Chancellor Karl Nehammer previously said Austria’s intelligence agencies should be given greater power to monitor communications on messaging apps to stop extremists.

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