2 arrested in plot to bomb Lady Gaga mega-concert in Brazil

Two people were arrested in a plot to bomb an enormous Lady Gaga concert in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday night, police said.

A man and a teenager were detained ahead of the show, which drew 2.1 million people to Rio’s wildly popular Copacabana Beach, according to Brazilian officials. The giant concert went off without an issue.

The suspects posed as members of Gaga’s “Little Monsters” fan base and attempted to recruit other young people to join their movement, promoting hatred of children, adolescents and LGBTQ+ people, Rio de Janeiro’s civil police force said in a press release.

Plotters hoped to detonate several improvised explosive devices and toss Molotov cocktails into the sprawling crowd, police said. Most of the attempted recruiting was done online, authorities said.

“The plan was treated as a ‘collective challenge’ with the aim of gaining notoriety on social media,” Rio police said.

Officers raided at least 15 locations across multiple Brazilian states on Saturday ahead of the show, seizing phones and other electronic devices, authorities said. The teenage suspect was cuffed on child porn charges in Rio de Janeiro, while the adult suspect was arrested on weapons charges in the southern Brazil state of Rio Grande do Sol.

“The work was carried out discreetly and precisely, avoiding panic or distortion of information among the population,” Brazilian police said. The arrests were only announced hours after the concert had concluded.

Gaga, 39, had not performed in Brazil since 2012 despite having a massive fan base in the country. She was forced to cancel a 2017 show due to health issues that left her hospitalized.

Saturday night’s performance was free to attend, and fans staked out spots near the stage early Saturday morning, more than 12 hours before Gaga took the stage just after 10 p.m. local time.

“Prior to and during the show, there were no known safety concerns, nor any communication from the police or authorities to Lady Gaga regarding any potential risks,” a spokesperson for the singer said on Sunday.

While Gaga’s show went ahead as planned, the bomb plot recalled a 2024 incident in which threats to a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna forced the pop superstar to cancel all three planned shows in the Austrian capital.

Even before the threat, Swift had spoken about how the 2017 Ariana Grande concert bombing in Manchester, England, and the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting weighed on her when she was planning her own tours.

With News Wire Services