An Austrian tribunal on Thursday sentenced a 21-year-old jihadist to 15 years in federal prison after he confessed to orchestrating a terror plot targeting Taylor Swift's blockbuster Eras Tour in Vienna, the BBC reported.
The perpetrator, identified strictly as Beran A under Austrian privacy legislation, was also convicted on an array of supplementary terrorism charges following a trial in the city of Wiener Neustadt.
The plot was dismantled at the eleventh hour after Austrian security agencies received an urgent intelligence tip-off from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The state-sponsored intervention occurred just before the first of three sold-out performances was scheduled to commence at Vienna's prominent Ernst Happel Stadium. In the wake of the active security threat, event organizers immediately canceled the entire Austrian leg of the global tour, devastating an estimated 200,000 fans who had traveled to the capital city.
It was later reported that the suspect who plotted the attack originally planned to target the Israeli embassy in Vienna.
State prosecutors proved that Beran A fell victim to radicalization and had formally pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) militant network. Prior to his arrest, the extremist made coordinated attempts to illegally procure black-market combat weaponry, including a hand grenade and an automatic machine gun, though those transactions ultimately failed.
The high-profile trial featured a second 21-year-old defendant, a Slovakian national identified as Arda K, who was accused of operating alongside Beran A within a localized Islamic State terror cell. While judicial authorities clarified that Arda K played no direct role in the specific conspiracy against the Taylor Swift concert venue, he was found guilty on related subversion charges and received a 12-year prison term.