By Francois Murphy
WIENER NEUSTADT, Austria, May 28 (Reuters) - The jury at the trial of a 21-year-old over a foiled Islamist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024 retired for deliberations on Thursday, with the defendant having already pleaded guilty to the main charges including terrorism offences.
Beran A, whose last name has not been made public in accordance with Austrian privacy rules, was arrested on August 7, 2024, the day before the first of three planned concerts by the U.S. pop star in the Austrian capital.
All three dates were then cancelled, to the dismay of fans and of Swift, who wrote afterwards that it was "devastating." While crowds of disappointed fans sang together in Vienna then to console themselves, neither Swift nor any "Swifties" appeared at the courthouse in Wiener Neustadt, a town south of the capital.
Beran A, who is Austrian, has pleaded guilty to charges related to the planned attack, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. He covered his face with a ring binder as he entered the courtroom to avoid being identifiable in pictures.
"I would just like to say that I am sorry," he said in a final statement after closing arguments. The jury then withdrew to deliberate, and the presiding judge told the gallery to expect that nothing would happen before 4 p.m. (1400 GMT).
Prosecutors say Beran A tried but failed to illegally buy weapons including a machine gun and hand grenade, and followed instructions in an Islamic State video posted online to make a small amount of the explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP).
He is also accused at the same trial of plotting separately with two school friends to carry out a solo attack each earlier in 2024 in separate Middle Eastern cities. He and co-defendant Arda K admit they travelled to Dubai and Istanbul respectively to carry out attacks but then did not follow through.
They have denied, however, providing moral support to the third man, who was arrested in Mecca on suspicion of stabbing a security official at the holy city's Grand Mosque. He is still in custody in Saudi Arabia.
"If the jury rules as the prosecution argued the case, then we are looking at a sentence of up to 20 years," Beran A's lawyer Anna Mair told reporters as she arrived at the court in Wiener Neustadt, a town near Vienna.
"If, however, the jury sees it as we do, namely that he did not provide support to anyone, then the sentence would be significantly shorter."
Closing arguments were so focused on that aspect that they did not even mention the Swift concert specifically. Mair and Arda K's lawyer David Jodlbauer repeated that their clients did not provide material support to the third man and if anything it was the other way around.
"Beran is not a leader. He is not an ideological mastermind," Mair said in her summing up.
(Reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Hugh Lawson)
