() – Details emerging about the alleged terrorist plot targeting Taylor Swift’s three concerts in Vienna are scant, but they already fit a chilling pattern familiar to European counterterrorism officials.
The Austrian Police reported this Wednesday the arrest of a 19-year-old young man in Ternitz, an hour’s drive from the place where Swift was scheduled to perform this Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the Ernst Happel stadium, with a capacity for 50,000 spectators.
In the search of the Austrian citizen’s home, “chemical substances” possibly related to bomb-making were discovered, according to the Police, who stated that “specific preparatory measures were taken” to attack Swift’s concerts.
Local media reported that the search of the area around the house forced the evacuation of 60 homes, and police added that it continued into the night.
A second suspect was arrested in Vienna that same afternoon. The police did not provide their age or sex, alluding to an ongoing investigation whose scope seemed to be expanding. “Other arrests have also been made,” police stated.
Both suspects had become radicalized on the Internet, according to police, who added that the 19-year-old had sworn allegiance to the new ISIS leader last month.
The Police also alluded to the role of social networks both in the radicalization of the suspects and in the alleged planning of the attacks.
“The communication of the perpetrators of the attacks is usually carried out in encrypted form,” which often hides their conversations from routine anti-terrorist surveillance, Director General of Public Security, Franz Ruf, told the press.
In recent months it has become alarmingly common for conversations between teenagers on the Internet to turn into conspiracies in the real world. A study by terrorism expert Peter Neumann, reported on by last month, showed that teenagers accounted for almost two-thirds of ISIS-related arrests in Europe in the previous nine months.
The study of 27 attacks linked to ISIS or dismantled plots since October last year revealed that of the 58 suspects, 38 were between 13 and 19 years old, according to Neumann, a professor of Security Studies at King’s College London. verified most of Neumann’s facts with European security officials.
Neumann noted that the latest Europol data showed that “the number of planned attacks and bombings has more than quadrupled” since 2022.
Among the cases Neumann referred to was another in Austria, in which a 14-year-old Montenegrin girl was arrested in May in the southern city of Graz after purchasing a knife and an ax for an attack she was allegedly plotting. ISIS material was also found on his computer.
Teenagers were also detained during the security operation carried out in France before the Paris Olympics.
At the end of May, an 18-year-old young man of Chechen origin was charged with “terrorist criminal association” for his alleged plans to attack spectators in the city of Saint-Étienne during the Games, according to a statement from the French anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office.
About a fortnight earlier, two teenagers were arrested in the northeast and south of France for planning a terrorist attack whose objective was unclear, according to the statement.
And in April, a 16-year-old from the Haute-Savoie department in southeastern France was arrested for allegedly investigating how to make an explosive belt and die as a martyr for ISIS, possibly for the purpose of the Olympic Games, the report added. release.
In recent months, the German Police also made public two alleged terrorist plots in which teenagers were involved.
In April, authorities in the western city of Düsseldorf said they had detained two girls, ages 15 and 16, and a 15-year-old boy on charges of planning a terrorist attack.
In another alleged plot related to a possible knife attack against a synagogue in Heidelberg, which was foiled in May, an 18-year-old young man was involved, according to a statement from the German prosecutor’s office.
Meanwhile, in Switzerland, police arrested a 15-year-old Swiss boy and a 16-year-old Italian boy in March for alleged support for ISIS and for planning bomb attacks, according to a police statement.
Neumann, the terrorism expert, said teenagers were often recruited online, where ISIS and its Central Asian affiliate ISIS-K only needed to see success in a handful of hundreds of potential recruits.
“Groups like (ISIS-K) specifically target young teenagers,” Neumann said. “They may not be very useful. They can screw up. They can change their minds,” he said, but “that doesn’t make them any less suspicious.” Who would think of a 13 year old boy as a terrorist? “One is enough.”
Teenagers were being recruited through social media platforms like TikTok, dragged through algorithms into online “bubbles” where jihadist recruiters can reach them, Neumann said.
ISIS-K was “by far the most ambitious and aggressive part of ISIS at the moment,” plotting complex attacks and recruiting online, he added.
A TikTok spokesperson told last month: “We stand firmly against violent extremism and remove 98% of content that violates our rules on promoting terrorism before we are informed.”
Although the details of the alleged plans to attack Swift’s concerts remain unclear, European security sources have become increasingly concerned that terrorist plots are increasingly “directed,” or organized by a recruiter. with more experience or resources from afar.
A British security source told that the so-called “targeted terrorist threat” had become a greater concern over the past 18 months, with ISIS-K being the most powerful group under scrutiny. Young people accessing extremist spaces and media online also remains a major problem, according to the source.
European counterterrorism authorities also face a rapidly changing terrorist threat from areas of the former Soviet Union, such as Russia’s North Caucasus region and Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan.
Last month, Austrian counterterrorism police reported that they had arrested eight men and one woman for raising funds for ISIS. Laptops, cash, fake passports and a vehicle were confiscated, and authorities stated that the suspects, originally from Chechnya, Russian Federation, could have their residence permit in Austria revoked.
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