Terrorist Suspects Plotting Mass Casualties at Taylor Swift Concert, Report One America News Network
OAN Staff Abril Elfi
1:06 PM – Thursday, August 29, 2024
The CIA has announced that the Muslim suspects that were arrested for planning a terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Austria, had planned to kill “a huge number” of people.
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On Wednesday, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen spoke at the Intelligence and National Security Summit in Maryland, where he discussed the planned attack at one of Swift’s Vienna shows.
“They were plotting to kill a huge number — tens of thousands of people at this concert, including I am sure many Americans — and were quite advanced in this,” Cohen said at the summit. “The Austrians were able to make those arrests because the agency and our partners in the intelligence community provided them information about what this ISIS-connected group was planning to do.”
“As a result, hundreds of lives, undoubtedly, were saved,” he added.
Three suspects, who were ages 17, 18, and 19, were arrested in connection to the planning of the attacks. The 18-year-old, an Iraqi national, was found to have “[taken] an oath of allegiance” to the Islamic terrorist organization ISIS. The suspects were inspired to carry out the attack by the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda, intelligence officials confirmed.
They also stated that they found bomb-making materials in the 19-year-old’s home.
Austria’s Directorate of State Security and Intelligence Omar Haijawi-Pirchner noted that the 19-year-old suspect admitted to the plot while he was under interrogation.
Haijawi-Pirchner continued, saying that the suspect was “clearly radicalized in the direction of the Islamic State” and allegedly intended to kill himself and “as many people as possible” outside the concert venue with homemade explosives.
Soon after, all three sold-out Swift Vienna shows were canceled following the arrests.
After the news broke out, Swift took to social media platforms, thanking the authorities for their hard work while noting that it was “devastating” for her to cancel the shows, upsetting fans.
“The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows,” Swift wrote. “Thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives.”
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