Brazilian Police Foil Bombing at Lady Gaga Concert
Lady Gaga in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 5, 2025. X/ @PopBase
May 5, 2025 Hour: 1:43 pm
The suspects were recruiting teenagers online to carry out attacks using improvised explosives.
On Sunday, Rio de Janeiro police arrested two members of a group that was planning to carry out an attack using homemade explosives at the free concert Lady Gaga held for 2.1 million Brazilians gathered on Copacabana Beach.
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The person responsible for organizing the attack was caught in the act in the state of Rio Grande do Sul for illegal possession of a firearm. The other individual involved, a teenager who was storing child sexual abuse material, was arrested in Rio de Janeiro.
The operation conducted simultaneous searches at thirteen locations across the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, and Mato Grosso. The investigation revealed that the suspects were “recruiting” teenagers online to “carry out attacks using improvised explosives.”
They used “fake profiles” on social media to pose as “members of the Lady Gaga fan community, known worldwide as the ‘Little Monsters’,” stated the Ministry of Justice, adding that the criminal group sought to gain notoriety on social media as part of a “challenge.”
The network promoted the radicalization of teenagers, the dissemination of hate crimes—primarily targeting the LGBTQ community—self-harm, and violent content as a form of group identity and challenge among youths, authorities said.
In one of the operations conducted in Macae, in the municipality of Rio, police searched the home of a man who was also planning attacks and had threatened to kill a minor live on camera.
The operation, dubbed “Fake Monster,” was made possible thanks to an alert from the intelligence department of the Rio police, which “identified digital cells aimed at inducing violent behavior in young people through encrypted language and challenges involving extremist symbolism.”
On Saturday, Lady Gaga held a massive free concert that lasted around two hours and took place under heavy security, which included about 5,000 officers, 78 observation towers, drones with facial recognition technology, and a dozen security cameras.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
