According to the New York Post, two individuals have been taken into custody by Vienna, Austrian authorities in relation to a plot to carry out a terror act during one of Taylor Swift’s next concerts there. According to Vienna State Police Director Franz Ruf and Police Chief Gerhard Purstl, a 19-year-old suspect who had allegedly sworn allegiance to ISIS was captured by federal and state police in Austria.
According to officials, both individuals had formed precise and comprehensive preparations for carrying out an attack after becoming radicalized online. Chemical materials that a bomb squad is allegedly investigating to see whether they could have been used to make a bomb were discovered during the 19-year-old’s detention.
Similar to the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, Austria’s Cobra team helped make the arrests.
As part of The Eras Tour’s international leg, Swift is set to play on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at the Ernst-Happel-Stadion in Vienna. Police assured that “the concrete danger has been minimized” and that there are no plans to cancel the concerts in spite of the arrests.
There will be far more security at the concerts, including the use of bomb squads, K-9 units, heavy weapons teams, and tactical vehicles. Fans should expect delays as authorities conduct thorough inspections of both persons and cars.
Swift’s Eras tour includes several performances at Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium this week.
Juliette Kayyem, a national security analyst for CNN, stated:
What we do know now is there’s at least — the main suspect is a 19 year old Austrian citizen. He was stopped south of the Capitol, where the, from where the concert is going to be.
He was apparently in what we call, preparatory, sorry, preparatory mode, which is essentially he was putting things together, to try to do attack. Now, we don’t know the nature of whether the chemicals or explosives would have worked. We don’t know how sophisticated he was, but it was enough to to cause this arrest and to have this alert. He apparently has an accomplice, and was radicalized relatively recently online. So we are likely to find in the days ahead. He is someone who was online and decides that this is a high profile event. They don’t get higher profile than Taylor Swift…His access, his capabilities, and the explosives that he had are still unknown.
CNN said just now that this threat has caused all three of Swift’s Vienna gigs to “be cancelled.”
Whoa – All three Taylor Swift concerns in Vienna have been cancelled over alleged planned terrorist attack via @cnn
— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) August 7, 2024
