By the time he came up with the idea of bombing a Taylor Swift concert, Beran Aliji’s young life had completely broken down. In July, amid a self-described mental crisis, the 19-year-old Austrian abruptly quit his job as a factory apprentice and isolated himself in his apartment, obsessing, as he later told police, about his own death.
With no money or prospects, and in lieu of close friendships, he began to immerse himself in a virtual world of violent videos and secret chatrooms devoted to the Islamic State. According to phone records seized by police, he began looking to the extremist group first for inspiration and then for practical advice about planning an attack.
