This is the result of a report by the Directorate of State Security and Intelligence (DSN). Items for making an explosive device were found in his kitchen.
The report, which is part of the investigation file, shows that the DSN became aware of the attack plans on August 2 – six days before the first of three concerts that were to take place from August 8 to 10 – although the report notes that the relevant information has “not yet been released for use in court”.
“Lone wolf” with attack plans
“The intelligence service department received information from partner services that an IS-inspired lone perpetrator (‘Lone Wolve’) is planning an attack on one of these Taylor Swift concerts. The potential assassin is also trying to get hold of a firearm and if this is not successful, the assassin is planning an attack with knives,” says the initial information obtained from abroad. The partner service provided the DSN with the 19-year-old’s phone number, his Telegram profile and announced that the suspect calls himself “Abu Dujana” in a relevant channel. Photographs were also forwarded, “one of which is based on the Vienna attacker’s declaration of allegiance from November 2, 2020,” as the investigators note.
In the focus of the observation team
After obtaining the relevant judicial authorization, the 19-year-old’s cell phone was tracked for the first time on August 2nd at 5:30 p.m. Observation measures at the young man’s address in Ternitz (Neunkirchen district) began at 7:00 p.m. That same evening and the following night, the main suspect’s 17-year-old friend was also tracked by the observation team at his address. He is said to have taken a kind of “test drive” in the suspect’s car. A follow-up horn and a blue light are said to have been tested – from the point of view of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the 19-year-old wanted to use these items to get as close as possible to the Happel Stadium under the pretense that he was a police officer or an emergency worker in plain clothes in order to kill Taylor Swift fans in front of the stadium.
After further observations – it was found, among other things, that the 19-year-old regularly wore gloves and an FFP2 mask in his house and garden and disposed of suspicious objects in a biowaste bin – and extensive investigations, the main suspect was arrested on August 7 at 7:36 a.m. Previously, the district in Ternitz where his parents, who were on vacation abroad at the time, and the 19-year-old were registered, had been cordoned off and evacuated for security reasons. Over 40 officers, explosives specialists and even robot dogs were involved in the house search, searching the house for possible booby traps.
What was found during the house search
The DSN report states the following about the results of the house search: “Items for making an IED (unconventional explosive device, a synonym for a booby trap) were found in the kitchen. A glass bottle with 45 grams of liquid TATP (acetone peroxide, an explosive mixture of everyday chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide, acetone and acid, which are available in every drugstore, note) was found in the refrigerator. A quick test by the BK (Federal Criminal Police Office, note) was positive.”
However, the TATP was not secured as evidence, but destroyed, as Werner Tomanek, the 19-year-old’s defense attorney, complained on Thursday. Referring to a passage in the incident report, according to which an “emergency destruction” of the TATP took place at the scene of the incident “by burning it in the garden,” Tomanek noted: “The fact that evidence is simply destroyed by the police is new.”
“Far from a threat scenario”
What was seized, however, was a quarter-liter bottle of acetone that was still a third full, an opened bottle of six percent sulfuric acid that was still fully full, and an unopened one-liter bottle of hydrogen peroxide, all of which were discovered under the seat of a corner bench in the kitchen. “It would never have been possible to make a functional bomb with that,” said Tomanek, “so we are far from a threat scenario that would justify the cancellation of the Taylor Swift concerts. Every football derby between Rapid and Austria Vienna has a far higher risk potential.”
The DSN sees things differently. The second incident report states that the 19-year-old acted with full intent and the intention of killing, injuring or endangering a large number of people by producing explosives and acquiring weapons such as a machete and knives. In doing so, he – in addition to the relevant terror provisions in the Criminal Code – also fulfilled the elements of attempted murder as part of a terrorist organization (Section 278c of the Criminal Code), the preparation of a crime using explosives (Section 175 of the Criminal Code) and intentional endangerment of the public (Section 176 of the Criminal Code).
