On Wednesday, authorities arrested a 19-year-old who had pledged loyalty to the Islamic State and was allegedly planning a terrorist attack at an upcoming Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Austria. And that prime suspect has since confessed to those plans.
According to a report from NBC News, officials in Austria said on Thursday that the 19-year-old suspect arrested on Wednesday as confessed to a plot to attack an upcoming Taylor Swift concert, revealing that he planned to kill himself and a large number of other people with knives and explosive devices.
Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, head of Austria’s Directorate of State Security and Intelligence, revealed that the suspect had downloaded instruction manuals for bomb building and said that authorities found hydrogen peroxide, homemade explosives, detonators and detonator cables at his apartment as well as assembled explosives.
“The situation was serious, the situation is serious. But we can also say: A tragedy was prevented,” Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said at the same news conference.“Large concerts are often a target of Islamist attacks.”
The threat resulted in the cancelation of all three of Swift’s concerts in Vienna, Austria this weekend, marking just the second time in her entire career that she has been forced to cancel a concert.
