General view shows outside of Happel stadium after Taylor Swift’s three concerts this week were canceled after the government confirmed a planned attack at the stadium in Vienna, Austria, August 8, 2024. REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

FRANKFURT, Aug 26 (Reuters) – A Berlin court on Tuesday gave a 16-year old who helped prepare a foiled attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna last year a suspended 1-1/2 year prison sentence under juvenile criminal law.

Charges against the Syrian adolescent, who was 14 during the plot, were brought in June. At the time of the charges, he was only identified as Mohammad A. in accordance with German privacy laws.

The Berlin court said on Tuesday the defendant had fully confessed and that the sentence, which can be appealed, was in line with the verdict sought by prosecutors.

Initially radicalised by militant group Islamic State’s online propaganda, the defendant sent the would-be attacker a video with bomb-building instructions and put him in contact with an Islamic State member, the court said.

Police made multiple arrests over the suspected plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in the Austrian capital’s Ernst Happel Stadium, prompting the cancellation of all three of her shows there in August last year.

Austria’s coalition government in June agreed on a plan to enable police to monitor suspects’ secure messaging in order to thwart militant attacks, ending what security officials have said is a rare and dangerous blind spot for a European Union country.

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