VIENNA (Reuters) – The lawyer of the primary suspect in a foiled plot to hold out an assault at Taylor Swift live performance in Vienna on Sunday sought to play down the seriousness of the plan, saying her consumer was solely “playing with ideas”.

Swift’s three deliberate concert events this week have been cancelled after Austrian authorities found a plot allegedly led by a 19-year-old to hold out an ISIS-inspired suicide assault at a soccer stadium the place tens of hundreds of followers have been planning to attend the reveals.

Austrian investigators stated the youth had just lately sworn a pledge to ISIS and had made a full confession after police raided his home, seizing chemical compounds, machetes and different units the plotters deliberate to make use of in a bomb assault.

Lawyer Ina-Christin Stiglitz advised Reuters the youth had solely been concerned with ISIS for the previous month.

“It interested him,” she stated, suggesting that her consumer had probably not supposed to hold out a critical assault.

“It was just playing with ideas,” she stated. “He says the bomb wasn’t of good enough quality, it wouldn’t have worked.”

He had researched on-line on how to construct a bomb, she added.

Amongst three different youngsters Austrian police have detained within the investigation was a 17-year-old youth, whom Stiglitz stated her consumer had described as his “best friend and neighbour”.

Neighbours of the 19-year-old within the small city of Ternitz expressed shock at his arrest, describing him as reserved however pleasant. Considered one of few hints pointing to potential radicalization was that he had just lately grown a protracted beard, they stated.

Responding to a query about why he had modified his look, his lawyer stated: “He wanted to be cool.”

Chancellor Karl Nehammer stated earlier that Austria’s intelligence companies ought to have higher energy to observe communications on messaging apps to cease extremists.