Featured Image Credit: Buda Mendes/Getty Images
Topics: World News, Lady Gaga, Music, Crime
Joe Harker
Topics: World News, Lady Gaga, Music, Crime
Police said that an attempt to attack a Lady Gaga concert which over two million people attended in Brazil with molotov cocktails and homemade bombs was stopped.
The famous singer held a free concert on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, yesterday (3 May) with concert organisers saying that a whopping 2.1 million people showed up to witness the music.
In 1994 the beach was the site of the world's biggest free rock concert in history after Rod Stewart performed to four million people.
Lady Gaga performed several of her classic songs during the concert, but some people intending to be present for the concert did not make it after being arrested by police on suspicion of planning to bomb it.
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According to Brazilian outlet Globo News, police arrested a man and a teenager as part of an operation dubbed 'Operation Fake Monster' which had identified a bombing threat targeting the concert.
Lady Gaga's fans call themselves 'little monsters', hence the name of the operation.
The Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro state said that suspects had been recruiting people to carry out attacks with improvised explosives with the aim of gaining fame on social media.
A total of nine addresses were raided as part of the police operation, and police said the group that had planned the attack were intent on spreading hate speech.
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Officers said the particular targets were children and the LGBTQIA+ community.
One man was arrested in Rio Grande do Sul for illegal possession of a weapon and a teenager was arrested for allegedly storing child pornography.
Police also recovered a number of electronic devices from the addresses they raided in their operation to stop the bombing attack, which would use people recruited to throw molotov cocktails and homemade bombs as part of their attack.
Officers said that the group which had planned to bomb the Lady Gaga concert had been trying to radicalise teenagers, promoted violent content on social media and encouraged hate crime and paedophilia.
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Rio state's security plan for the concert involved the deployment of 3,300 military and 1,500 police officers, as well as 400 military firefighters.
It is Lady Gaga's first concert in Brazil since 2012, after a planned performance in 2017 was cancelled at the last minute due to health issues.
In addition to attracting a huge number of local Rio de Janeiro residents, around 500,000 tourists visited the city in the days leading up to the concert.