Two people arrested as “suspects were recruiting participants, including minors, to carry out coordinated attacks using improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails,” authorities announced Sunday
Brazilian police revealed Sunday that they thwarted a terror attack that would have targeted Lady Gaga’s record-breaking concert at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach.
The Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro state and Brazil’s Justice Ministry announced two arrests the morning after the concert, adding that suspects were planning to carry out a bomb attack at the concert that drew an estimated 2.5 million people.
According to police (via Reuters), the plot was orchestrated by a group “promoting hate speech [against the LGBTQ community] and the radicalization of teenagers.”
“The suspects were recruiting participants, including minors, to carry out coordinated attacks using improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails,” the police said in a statement. “The plan was treated as a ‘collective challenge’ with the aim of gaining notoriety on social media.”
One male suspect described as the group’s leader was arrested in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul for illegal possession of a firearm, while a teenager in Rio de Janeiro was detained for storing child pornography.
Authorities — which dubbed the investigation “Operation Fake Monster,” a nod to Gaga’s Little Monsters fanbase — also carried out search warrants on 15 additional suspects throughout the country, confiscating phones and other electronic devices.
The plot was uncovered through the Justice Ministry’s the ministry’s Cyber Operations Lab following a tip from Rio state police intelligence, which found online evidence of digital cells encouraging violence toward the Copacabana Beach attendees.
