Inspired by ISIS: From a Taylor Swift plot in Vienna to carnage in New Orleans

The Washington Post

17:19 JST, January 4, 2025

By the time he came up with the idea of bombing a Taylor Swift concert, Beran Aliji’s young life had completely broken down. In July, amid a self-described mental crisis, the 19-year-old Austrian abruptly quit his job as a factory apprentice and isolated himself in his apartment, obsessing, as he later told police, about his own death.

With no money or prospects, and in lieu of close friendships, he began to immerse himself in a virtual world of violent videos and secret chatrooms devoted to the Islamic State. According to phone records seized by police, he began looking to the extremist group first for inspiration and then for practical advice about planning an attack.

“My operation is to take place at a big concert,” he wrote in a text message to a stranger he believed to be a member of the Islamic State, according to Austrian records exclusively obtained by The Washington Post. “I will try to get a gun and bombs. If that doesn’t work, I will use big knives. Or I will kill a police officer and take his rifle.”

The planned attack on Taylor Swift’s Aug. 9 concert in Vienna was foiled when police arrested Aliji, whose online messages were being monitored by at least one foreign intelligence agency. Months later, hundreds of text messages and multiple police reports offer insight into that plot, while also shedding light on how the group continues to inspire violence five years after its self-proclaimed caliphate was destroyed.

The trove, details of which have not been previously reported, reveal a path toward radicalization that bears striking similarities to what police have observed in other recent terrorism cases, including the New Year’s Day rampage in New Orleans that killed at least 14 people.

Like the Austrian suspect, the man accused of ramming a vehicle through crowds of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street appears to have self-radicalized after a string of personal crises, including divorces, a job loss and financial insolvency. Like Aliji, Houston resident Shamsud-Din Jabbar was described as being “inspired” by the Islamic State and pledged allegiance to the group in a self-made video. Whether the extremist group was directly involved in either plot is as yet unclear.

The Islamic State’s Afghanistan affiliate, known as ISIS-K, is believed to have orchestrated complex attacks with multiple casualties in Iran and Russia this past year.

Jabbar’s precise motivations are currently unknown. But in many of the recent cases, the perpetrators appear to have been driven less by ideology or politics than by rage over personal failings, terrorism experts say. The suspects may have little or no direct contact with the Islamic State. Yet the group is still a potent source of radicalization – and a convenient excuse, in the attacker’s mind, to justify violence.

Unlike al-Qaeda, the Islamic State has built a thriving online presence and encourages followers to carry out terrorist attacks wherever they are, without waiting for instructions or approval. Deprived of its caliphate, the group now operates in the shadows, with a network of affiliated groups and cells stretching across the Middle East and North Africa to South Asia. In recent years, it has sought to increase the tempo of terrorist attacks, particularly in Syria and Afghanistan.

“These are bitter, angry people,” said Bruce Riedel, a counterterrorism expert and 30-year veteran of the CIA. “Here’s a classic case of someone who converted to Islam, had two failed marriages, serious financial problems, and he finds now a cause to justify his life and his rage,” he said, referring to Jabbar, who, in a videotaped message, contemplated killing his family before opting to carry out an Islamic State-style terrorist attack.

The same personal failings and frustrations are evident in documents from the investigation of Aliji, who is in jail pending the filing of a formal indictment on terrorism-related charges expected early this year, Austrian officials said.

The plan to target a concert by one of the world’s biggest pop stars garnered global media attention and launched one of 2024’s biggest counterterrorism investigations, ultimately drawing in intelligence and law enforcement agencies from at least six countries, officials said. While the plot initially fueled speculation about a possible connection to the war in Gaza, the narrative that emerges from the messages is a more insular one, that of a deeply disturbed and alienated young man who became radicalized online and came to see terrorism as a means of gaining an identity and purpose.

But unlike Jabbar, a 42-year-old military veteran who served in Afghanistan, Aliji had minimal resources and few capabilities, and appears to have been drawn to the Taylor Swift concert as a target of opportunity, records show. He had no clear plan and was repeatedly thwarted in his attempts to obtain weapons, leading to his amateur efforts to make a bomb at home, officials said.

While several recent plots have involved older individuals, Aliji’s age fits with what experts describe as a trend toward ever-younger suspects. Intelligence officials are expressing alarm over rising cases of self-radicalization among teenagers who, like Aliji, are avid consumers of Islamic State videos and sometimes see terrorists as heroes and role models.

While social media platforms actively sought to block the group’s messages in the past, Islamic State videos are within easy reach of today’s tech-savvy youths, experts say.

The ranks of the radicalized is growing “younger and younger,” said a senior European counterterrorism official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential investigations.

“Children are watching execution videos,” the official said, “and following extremist influencers at an early age.”

Seeking ‘explosives, if available’

Vienna had been abuzz for weeks. Taylor Swift’s first-ever appearance in the Austrian capital was to be one of the country’s biggest pop performances in years, drawing nearly 200,000 fans for three shows. Tickets sold out within hours, and thousands of those not fortunate enough to obtain one were expected to congregate around the city’s Ernst-Happel stadium.

Aliji, who lived in a small town an hour’s drive south of Vienna, had decided that he would be among them – not to party, but to kill. An Austrian police report alleges that the 19-year-old swore allegiance to the Islamic State in a self-made video a few weeks before the concert and, after weighing possible targets – he briefly considered a Shiite mosque, Kurdish diplomats and Vienna’s Israeli Embassy – decided that he would carry out a terrorist attack in the group’s name at a major public event in the city.

The coming Taylor Swift concert struck him as an ideal opportunity, documents show, not only because of its prominence, but because one of Aliji’s best friends, a 17-year-old Austrian youth, happened to work for a company that was providing security and logistical support for the event. Both Aliji and the friend – whose name has been withheld by Austrian authorities because of his age – were arrested hours before the start of the first of the three shows. The youth has not been formally charged.

Werner Tomanek, a Viennese lawyer representing Aliji, declined to comment other than to note in an email that there are as yet “no official accusations, but only a working hypothesis of the public prosecutor’s office.”

U.S. and European officials say the criminal case is based partly on hundreds of electronic messages intercepted or collected by intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials in advance of a trial expected to take place late this year.

In the online messages, hundreds of which were reviewed by The Post, Aliji emerges as troubled youth who, according to his own description of himself, had few friends and suffered regularly from depression. The Vienna-born son of North Macedonian immigrants embraced a deeply conservative form of Islam as a teenager and, in the months before the plot, investigators said, had begun styling himself in the manner of the Islamist extremists whose videos he frequently watched on his cellphone.

A police examination of his phone would turn up dozens of ISIS and al-Qaeda propaganda videos, including recordings of beheadings. His interests coincided with a change in behavior during his final year at school, his case file shows. A school official would tell police that Aliji showed misogynistic and antisocial tendencies in the classroom, and that the school’s staff worried that he was becoming “extremely dangerous.”

Alone in his room, according to a police account, Aliji took multiple selfies with his phone camera, posing with knives and a machete he purchased online. He later told police that he took the photos because he “wanted to be cool and brag about it.” But he also recorded several halting, rambling videos in which he expressed support for the Islamic State and talked about a wish to commit an unspecified “martyrdom” operation. He later explained to police that he was inspired by the 2017 suicide bombing in Manchester, England, that killed nearly two dozen people outside at a concert by Ariana Grande, another American female pop star.

Aliji told police he disapproved of “loud music” and believed women should be veiled in public, according to the transcript of a police interrogation seen by The Post. In his videos, he railed against German Chancellor Olaf Scholz – a “dirty dog,” he said – and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He said he wanted the return of the caliphate that the Islamic State had established.

In other online searches, he downloaded instructions for making a homemade bomb and began inquiring in Telegram chatrooms about ways to procure guns and other weapons from shadowy online vendors.

“I am interested in buying guns. Do you ship to Austria?” he asked in July 28 in a chat with a self-identified American weapons vendor. Besides firearms, he said he wanted high-capacity magazines, and, “if possible, a silencer, and explosives, if available.”

After being shown a photo of a hand grenade for sale, he asked: “Can it explode cars?”

“Perfectly well,” came the reply. “It can explode a house.”

But the vendor’s minimum purchase price was $1,000, an amount Aliji acknowledged was out of reach.

“I don’t know when I will have the money,” he wrote to the vendor, who has not been publicly identified by police. “Right now, I’m looking for a job or anything that would bring me money.”

Having failed at purchasing a gun, Aliji spent hours trying to make explosives in his apartment while his parents were out of town. Having acquired an online recipe for triacetone triperoxide, or TATP – an explosive popular with terrorist groups because the ingredients are commonly available – he began looking for chemicals, detonators and metal pipe to make a bomb.

Police records show that he stole some chemicals from his workplace and bought others at stores, mixing them together in his kitchen. After multiple misfires, he succeeded in making TATP, but only a tiny amount, which he stored in his apartment refrigerator.

A forensic evaluation later concluded that Aliji’s foray into explosives manufacturing produced barely 1½ ounces of highly diluted TATP. It was hardly enough to inflict serious damage, experts later said.

Seeking advice from ISIS

As the date for the concert drew closer, Aliji’s efforts became increasingly frenetic, documents suggest. Using his phone, he conducted more than two dozen online searches for “Taylor Swift” and “Taylor Swift concert.” He also decided to seek advice from the Islamic State.

After obtaining contact information from an online acquaintance in Germany, Aliji sat in his apartment in the late evening of July 30 and typed out a Telegram message. It was addressed to “Abu Omar,” someone he believed to be an Islamic State official. Investigators have declined to comment on the person’s true identity, or whether Abu Omar had any links with the extremist group. The exchange was monitored by a foreign intelligence agency and later became official evidence in the case, documents show.

The purported Islamic State official offered to help, including by supplying weapons. In one exchange, Abu Omar said that ISIS could provide Aliji with a weapon of mass destruction: a canister containing sarin, a highly lethal nerve agent. He suggested that Aliji place the container in a crowded place and allow the deadly fumes to seep out. He could protect himself from sarin’s effects, Abu Omar wrote, by purchasing a surgical mask at a drugstore – although in fact it would have been useless against one of the world’s most lethal man-made substances.

Abu Omar then made two demands of his own, according to a transcript of the exchange. He urged Aliji to send him one of the videos he had made of himself pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. Then he asked whether the Austrian youth’s operation could be postponed until a later date. On the latter, Aliji refused. He needed to act soon, he explained, because his parents were returning from their trip in a few days.

A lightning raid

Days later, Austrian intelligence officials received a tip from what they said was a “partner” agency that had monitored Aliji’s online chats.

Officials in Vienna received the first tip on Aug. 1, as the youth’s chatroom conversations were still underway. A CIA official said the U.S. intelligence agency helped alert Austria’s government to the plot.

No such monitoring appears to have occurred in Jabbar’s case. In the United States, as in Austria, federal privacy laws prohibit government eavesdropping on citizens without a court order.

On Aug. 7 – a day before the first of Swift’s scheduled concerts – Austrian SWAT teams stormed Aliji’s apartment after evacuating nearby homes because of the risk of hidden explosives. His 17-year-old friend was arrested the same day.

It remains unclear the extent of damage Aliji might have inflicted had he not been caught. During questioning, he told police that he failed to obtain weapons other than knives and that he had no real plan other than to “improvise,” according to a transcript.

What is perhaps most disturbing about the case, analysts say, is what it reveals about the ready availability of extremist propaganda online and its power to influence the thinking and actions of youths with troubled backgrounds. Social media companies were once more vigilant about screening out Islamic State videos and messages, but the content is increasingly available to anyone looking to find it, said Rita Katz, founder of SITE Intelligence Group, a private company that monitors extremist online activity.

“ISIS is still very relevant, especially for the young generation,” Katz said. “You can find them online more easily than a few years ago.”

Soon after the arrests, amid fears of a wider plot, the Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna were canceled.

Tickets were refunded, and fans consoled. Swift issued a personal statement on her Instagram account expressing regret to her supporters and gratitude to police for uncovering the plot.

“Thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives,” Swift wrote.