a minute agoCIA: Attack during singer Taylor Swift's concert aimed at thousands of victims
Periskopi(2 years ago)
(2 years ago)Planners of the failed attack during singer Taylor Swift's concert in Vienna were aiming to kill “The thousands of “participants. The attack failed after the US intelligence agency CIA received information enabling authors to arrest, the CIA deputy director announced. The CIA reported Austrian authorities on terrorist plans, which are thought to be linked to the state group [...]
Planners of the failed attack during singer Taylor Swift's concert in Vienna were aiming to kill “The thousands of “participants. The attack failed after the US intelligence agency CIA received information enabling authors to arrest, the CIA deputy director announced.
The CIA reported Austrian authorities on terrorist plans, which are thought to be linked to the Islamic State group. From the information of the discovery and the arrests that followed, there were three tours for which all tickets had been sold in advance, enraging the art lovers who had traveled from around the globe to attend Taylor Swift's concert.
CIA Deputy Director David Cohen spoke about this during the annual meeting of National Intelligence and Security held in Maryland.
“were planning to kill a huge number of thousands of people at this concert, among them a number of Americans, and they had probably made a lot of progress towards this target”, Mr. Cohen said on Wednesday. “Australians managed to make arrests after our agency and our partners in the intelligence community provided information on what this group planning to do with ISIS”.
Austrian officials said the main suspect, a 19-year-old Austrian national, was inspired by the Islamic State. He is thought to be planning to attack with knives and artisanal explosives outside the stadium, where over 30,000 artisans would gather. Another 65 thousand participants were expected to be inside the stadium. Investigators discovered chemicals and technology devices during his house raid.
Austria's Interior Minister, Gerhard Carrer, had earlier indicated that the assistance of other intelligence agencies was needed, as Austrian investigators, unlike these agencies, do not have legal competencies to monitor mobile messages.
The 19-year-old lawyer has said the charges are exaggerated “, in the best case” and claimed Austrian authorities are venturing the case to acquire greater surveillance competencies.
Taylor Swift broke her silence last week, after the concert ended in London.
The concert abort in Vienna was shocking”, she wrote in the Instagram. “Arway for cancellation gave me a new sense of fear and great guilt, as so many people were planning to come to the” concerts.
She thanked the authorities, writing that their <x0falgae, we mourned the concerts rather than the lifes” lost. She added that she had not spoken earlier, thus giving security priority.
“Allow me to be very clear: I won't speak publicly about something if I think it might provoke those who would like to hurt the art lovers who come to my shows”, she wrote.
The concert organiser, “Barracuda Music<18x1>, said he cancelled the three-night tour in Vienna that was due to begin on August 8th, because arrests made in connection with the plot became very close to the time of the show.
The main suspect, as well as a 17-year-old, was arrested on August 6th, a day before the annulments were announced. A third 18-year-old suspect was arrested on August 8th. Their names were not disclosed, according to Austrian privacy rules.
Concerts in London, next stop after Vienna, took place after a knife attack on a dance class with Miss Swift's music, left three little girls dead in Great Britain. In a statement following the attack on the British city of Southport, Mrs. Swift said it was “fully shocked” and “without a word of how tou ever express condolences to these families”. The media reported that Mrs. Swift met with some of the survivors in London.
The planned attacks in Vienna also brought parallels to mind with a 2017 suicide attack at a Ariana Grandes concert in Manchester, England, that killed 22 people. The bomb exploded at the end of the Grand singer's concert as thousands of young people were leaving, thus becoming Britain's deadliest extremist attack in recent years.
Mr. Cohen praised on Wednesday the CIA's work on preventing planned violence, saying the <x0... the other” of counterterrorism in preventing such attacks usually go public.
I can tell you that inside my agency, and I'm sure that even in other agencies, there were people who thought it was a really good day for Langley to be”, he said, referring to the name of the CIA headquarters. singer Taylor Swift's concert tournament resumes in autumn./ VOA
