Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna, Austria were canceled due to suspected terrorism at the beginning of August. According to the CIA, the people who planned the concert attacks wanted to cause unspeakable destruction.
At the beginning of August, a pop star Taylor Swift’s The people who planned terrorist attacks on concerts in Austria wanted to kill tens of thousands of people, the US Central Intelligence Service CIA claims.
Reported about it among others Euronews.
Taylor Swift was scheduled to perform in Vienna, Austria for three days at the beginning of August. However, the concerts were canceled due to the threat of a terrorist attack. Austrian public radio ORF said at the time that the authorities had arrested two men who had planned to attack the concert.
Now Deputy Director of the CIA David Cohen told more about the men’s plans.
According to Cohen, the men had connections to the Islamist terrorist organization ISIS. The main suspect is a 19-year-old man and a citizen of Austria. This had planned to strike outside the concert stadium, where more than 30,000 Swift fans were expected to gather.
The man planned to attack a crowd of people with explosives and sharp weapons. In a later investigation, “chemical compounds” and “technical equipment” were found in the suspect’s home.
– They planned to kill a huge number of people, tens of thousands of people at this concert…and they were very far along in their plans, Cohen told the Intelligence and National Security Summit event in the United States.
Leads for the Austrians
Austrian Minister of the Interior by Gerhard Karner According to the report, the CIA’s help was necessary in preventing the attack, because unlike some other intelligence services, the Austrian intelligence service does not have the right to monitor citizens’ text message traffic.
According to CIA Deputy Director Cohen, the terrorist attack was prevented with the help of “leads” found by the CIA and its intelligence community partners. The CIA told the leads to the Austrians, who eventually caught the suspects.
At the event, Cohen praised the CIA’s work to prevent violence and lamented how often successes in counter-terrorism work are overlooked.
The lawyer of the 19-year-old suspect has accused the intelligence authorities of exaggeration and said that the Austrian authorities are looking for more surveillance opportunities through threatening pictures.