VIENNA (Reuters) – The lawyer of the principle suspect in a foiled plot to hold out an assault at Taylor Swift live performance in Vienna on Sunday sought to minimize the seriousness of the plan, saying her consumer was solely “playing with ideas”.
Swift’s three deliberate concert events this week have been cancelled after Austrian authorities found a plot allegedly led by a 19-year-old to hold out an ISIS-inspired suicide assault at a soccer stadium the place tens of 1000’s of followers have been planning to attend the reveals.
Austrian investigators mentioned the youth had lately sworn a pledge to ISIS and had made a full confession after police raided his home, seizing chemical substances, machetes and different units the plotters deliberate to make use of in a bomb assault.
Lawyer Ina-Christin Stiglitz instructed Reuters the youth had solely been concerned with ISIS for the previous month.
“It interested him,” she mentioned, suggesting that her consumer had not likely supposed to hold out a critical assault.
“It was just playing with ideas,” she mentioned. “He says the bomb wasn’t of good enough quality, it wouldn’t have worked.”
He had researched on-line on the right way to construct a bomb, she added.
Amongst three different youngsters Austrian police have detained within the investigation was a 17-year-old youth, whom Stiglitz mentioned her consumer had described as his “best friend and neighbour”.
Neighbours of the 19-year-old within the small city of Ternitz expressed shock at his arrest, describing him as reserved however pleasant. Considered one of few hints pointing to potential radicalization was that he had lately grown a protracted beard, they mentioned.
Responding to a query about why he had modified his look, his lawyer mentioned: “He wanted to be cool.”
Chancellor Karl Nehammer mentioned earlier that Austria’s intelligence businesses ought to have higher energy to watch communications on messaging apps to cease extremists.
