Taylor Swift concert plot: Austrian police find bomb chemicals in suspect’s home

The 19-year-old prime suspect in an alleged plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna that led to the cancellation of the singer’s three-night run in the Austrian capital had collected chemicals that could have been used to make a bomb, a senior Austrian security official has said.

The Austrian suspect was arrested along with a 17-year-old for allegedly planning an Islamist attack. A third person, also 17, was taken into custody late on Wednesday in connection with the investigation. Authorities said they had reason to believe one of the Swift concerts was a target.

Unconfirmed media reports said two other suspects were still at large, with a “Europe-wide” manhunt under way.

Swift, 34, has not yet commented on the cancellations. The Vienna leg of the star’s Eras tour at Ernst Happel stadium on Thursday, Friday and Saturday had been expected to draw more than 170,000 people. Austrian media said there were no plans for the shows to be held at a later date. Fans will receive a refund for their tickets, organisers said.

Austria’s general director for public security, Franz Ruf, said chemical substances had been found in a search of the home of the 19-year-old, who had pledged his allegiance to the radical jihadist Islamic State group “in recent weeks” and posted it on the online messaging app Telegram in early July.

“We are of course investigating their wider surroundings,” Ruf told ORF radio of the suspects, and confirmed the initial information had come from “foreign services”. He said the final decision to call off the concerts had been made by the organisers.

Ruf said evidence of “concrete preparatory actions” for a possible attack had been found in the home of the 19-year-old in the town of Ternitz near the Hungarian border, including chemical substances and “technical contraptions”.

The arrest of the suspects “minimised the threat situation from this small group”, he said, but there was still “abstract danger” that security forces were taking seriously.

Austrian media said the 19-year-old had stolen the chemicals from his former employer, a local metalworking firm, and had built a bomb. The Kurier newspaper reported that he had planned to plough a car into the crowd outside the stadium and had also considered using machetes and knives.

Police, whose special forces stormed the suspect’s home in the early hours of Wednesday morning, had briefly evacuated about 100 people in the area, including elderly residents of a care home.

Austrian authorities did not immediately comment on the reports. US media, citing anonymous sources, reported that the initial tip had come from US intelligence and had been passed on to Austrian authorities and Europol.

The reports said that US investigators had had doubts whether the plan had been viable and whether the plotters had managed to build an explosive device. But the sources told ABC News that chemical substances found by Austrian police pointed to such an intent.

Austria’s chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said in a post on X that the cancellation of the concerts was “a bitter disappointment for all fans in Austria”.

“The situation surrounding the apparently planned terror attack in Vienna was very serious,” he wrote, adding that thanks to intensive cooperation between police, Austrian and foreign intelligence, “the threat could be recognised early on, tackled and a tragedy prevented”.

Swift is due to play five sold-out dates at London’s Wembley stadium from next Thursday. Diana Johnson, the UK’s policing minister, told LBC radio there had been no reports of “anything of note” regarding those shows and said Scotland Yard would be assessing any potential threats.

She said: “Clearly the police will be looking at all the intelligence and making decisions; they risk-assess every event that happens in this country.”

The tour is scheduled to run until December.