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A Syrian teenager has gone on trial in Berlin accused of involvement in an Islamic State-inspired plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna last summer.
The case brought by federal prosecutors against the 15-year-old defendant, identified only as Mohammad A in keeping with German privacy rules, includes charges of preparing a “severe subversive act of violence” and supporting a terrorist organisation abroad.
He is accused of translating a video on bomb-building from Arabic and sending it to a then 19-year-old man, named as Beran A, who was allegedly behind the plot in Austria. Mohammad A is also alleged to have helped to establish contact with a member of Islamic State.
The Vienna leg of Swift’s blockbuster Eras tour was called off last August after two people were arrested over an apparent plot to launch an attack on a public event in the Austrian capital. Authorities said they had arrested a 19-year-old man for allegedly planning an attack in the Vienna region and suggested that Swift’s shows had been the “focus” of the plot.
The 19-year-old suspect intended “to kill himself and a large crowd of people”, said Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, the head of state protection and intelligence at the Austrian interior ministry, at the time.
Swift later reacted to the foiled terror attack on Instagram, saying she felt “a new sense of fear” and a “tremendous amount of guilt” about the potential risk to her fans.
Mohammad A was arrested on the day the concerts were cancelled. He attended a school in the eastern German city of Frankfurt an der Oder and was 14 when the events in question occurred. His name was found among Beran A’s contacts.
The presiding judge at the Berlin superior court of justice granted the request by his defence lawyers to try their client behind closed doors owing to his young age and the “heated press coverage” of his case.
The judge agreed public hearings could enhance the already significant stigma against the teenager, who was not in custody but has been barred from normal school instruction, the daily Berliner Morgenpost reported.
Prosecutors say Mohammad A became a follower of Islamic State ideology at the latest in April 2024 and sent a text to one of the plot conspirators in Austria containing a loyalty oath to the group.
German authorities have reported increasing radicalisation of younger suspects among the far right and radical left as well as among Islamic extremists.
The trial, which began on Monday, is expected to last until at least 26 August.
The main suspect in Austria was still under investigation, prosecutors in Vienna told the German news agency dpa.
