A German court has handed down a suspended sentence to a 16-year-old boy who helped prepare a foiled attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Austria last year.
The Syrian teenager, who was 14 at the time, received a 1.5 year suspended sentence under juvenile criminal law.
Charges against the boy were brought in June when he only identified as Mohammad A in accordance with German privacy laws.
The court in Berlin said that he had confessed and the sentence, which can be appealed, was in line with the verdict sought by prosecutors.
Initially radicalised by militant group Islamic State's online propaganda, the defendant sent the would-be attacker a video with bomb-building instructions and put him in contact with an IS member, the court said.
Police made multiple arrests over the suspected plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna's Ernst Happel Stadium, prompting the cancellation of all three of her shows there last August.
Earlier this year, the Austrian government agreed on a plan to enable police to monitor suspects' secure messaging in order to thwart militant attacks, ending what security officials have said is a rare and dangerous blind spot for a European Union country.
Accreditation Reuters
