Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Deputy Director David Cohen says a jihadist terror plot targeting a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Austria, aimed to kill “tens of thousands” of people, including “many Americans.”
“They planned to kill a huge number of people, tens of thousands at this concert including, I’m sure, many Americans,” Cohen said. “The Austrians were able to [arrest the suspects] because the [CIA] and our partners in the intelligence community provided them information about what this ISIS-connected group was planning to do,”
Concerts planned for August 8, 9, and 10 in the European capital were all canceled after the plot was uncovered. Initially, two Austrian citizens with Turkish and Croatian backgrounds were arrested in connection with the scheme, followed by an 18-year-old Iraqi immigrant.
Young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga class in Southport, England, were targeted in a mass stabbing by a migration-background teenager on July 29. Three were killed, and several others were left in critical condition. Two adult female teachers and a man in his sixties who tried to stop the attacker were also injured. However, the authorities have not identified the attack, which sparked widespread anti-immigration demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, as terrorism.
In 2017, a jihadist suicide bomber attacked an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, killing 22 and injuring over 1,000. Many of the victims were minors and their parents, with the youngest fatality being an eight-year-old girl.
