Town at centre of teenage Taylor Swift plot stunned by online radicalisation

TERNITZ, Austria – The teenager who the Austrian authorities say planned to unleash a “bloodbath” at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna this week only recently showed hints of being radicalised on the internet into committing acts of violence, according to people who know him.

Identified by Austrian media as Beran A., the 19-year-old was said by neighbours to have been reserved but friendly

before his arrest this wee

k thrust him into international headlines when the authorities announced they had thwarted the planned attack.

His neighbours in Ternitz, a small town some 80km south-west of Vienna, were stunned by the accusations levelled against him, although several said he had grown a long beard and become more serious in the run-up to the foiled plot.

“Only recently did he become a bit unusual,” said Ms Nicole Morgenbesser, a 33-year-old mother living nearby.

Ms Morgenbesser said Beran, who is from a family of North Macedonian origin, had always cheerfully greeted her on the street or waved from his car – until a few weeks ago.

“He stopped greeting me,” she said, expressing sorrow for the parents of the young man, who lived with him in a bright, freshly painted terraced house at the end of the street.

Austrian officials handling the investigation said the online self-radicalisation of the youth occurred quickly, leading to him swearing a pledge to the Islamic State in a video and telling people he had “big plans” after quitting his job in July.

Described as the prime mover behind the plan to attack a football stadium where Swift was on Aug 8 due to kick off a three-day stint in Vienna, he was the oldest of four teenagers so far detained by the police, the others being 18, 17 and 15.

“You always hear about these sort of things, but it’s something else when this happens on your own front door,” said Mr Christian Samwald, mayor of Ternitz, a town of around 15,000 people nestled among lush fields of sunflowers in a river valley enclosed by the green mountainsides of the Gutenstein Alps.

Austrian investigators said the 19-year-old made a full confession. It is unclear if he has a lawyer, and state prosecutors said they have no information on the matter.

Mr Samwald said there has been shock and dismay in Ternitz about the news because there was no prior indication that the youth harboured any radical inclinations.

“The lesson is it’s difficult to prevent someone from being radicalised on the internet,” he said.

The youth apparently began an apprenticeship after the family moved from Vienna to Ternitz a few years ago, without attending school there, the mayor said.

Family shocked

Dozens of residents were temporarily ejected from their homes on Aug 7 so that armed, masked police could raid the suspect’s house, seizing chemicals, machetes and devices the plotters had planned to use in the attack.

About an hour earlier, the police arrested the youth, with what one neighbour described as a “shout” and “bang” outside just a few metres from her front door.

Reuters spoke to over a dozen neighbours who said the youth’s parents were away at the time. The police, they said, told them there was a gas leak so the locals, who included residents of a retirement home, would leave their houses.

Residents said the parents returned after the raid, and they were believed to be inside the little two-storey house as a raft of accusations was read out against their son in Vienna.

Knocks on the door went unanswered, and there was no sign of movement behind the lace curtains and partly shuttered blinds.

Close relatives of the family with roots in the North Macedonian town of Gostivar, hundreds of kilometres to the south-east of Ternitz, were also looking for answers.

“It looks like someone has manipulated him because we are not such a family,” said one of them in the village of Cajle on the outskirts of Gostivar. “We still cannot believe what has happened.” REUTERS