Two people have been arrested in connection with an alleged plot to detonate explosives at a free Lady Gaga concert in Rio de Janeiro, in what authorities believe was an attempt to target Brazil’s LGBTQ community.
The Rio event on Saturday was the biggest show of the pop star’s career. It attracted an estimated 2.1 million fans to Copacabana beach and had crowds screaming and dancing along.
“They were clearly saying that they were planning an attack at Lady Gaga’s concert motivated by sexual orientation,” Felipe Cury, secretary of the Rio police, told a press conference on Sunday.
The Rio police chief, Luiz Lima, said the group disseminated hate speech and violent content online “aimed at gaining notoriety in order to attract more viewers, more participants – most of them teenagers, many of them children”.
Even as Brazilian authorities said they arrested suspects in the hours before Lady Gaga’s show, the event went ahead without disruption – leading some to question the seriousness of the threat. Serious security concerns typically lead organisers to cancel such massive events – as happened with Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna last year.
Police said nothing about the alleged plot at the time in an effort to “avoid panic” and “the distortion of information”.
A spokesperson for Lady Gaga said the pop star and her team “learned about this alleged threat via media reports this morning. 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.”
The statement added: “Her team worked closely with law enforcement throughout the planning and execution of the concert and all parties were confident in the safety measures in place.”
Security was tight at Saturday’s concert, with 5,200 military and police officers deployed to the beach where fans were revelling in the pop singer’s classic hits including Born This Way, which became an LGBTQ anthem after its 2011 release.
Authorities arrested two people in connection with the alleged plot – a man described as the group’s leader in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul on illegal weapons possession charges, and a teenager in Rio on child sexual abuse charges. Police did not elaborate on their exact roles in the plot or on how the group came to target Lady Gaga’s free concert.
“Those involved were recruiting participants, including teenagers, to carry out integrated attacks using improvised explosives and molotov cocktails,” police said.
The Justice Ministry said it determined the group posed a “risk to public order”. It said the group falsely presented themselves online as Little Monsters – Lady Gaga’s nickname for her fans – in order to lure teeangers into “networks with violent and self-destructive content”.
During a series of raids on the homes of 15 suspects across several Brazilian states, authorities confiscated phones and other electronic devices. Although police said they believed homemade bombs were intended for use in the planned attack, there was no mention of the raids turning up any weapons or explosive material.
Cury said one of the suspects whose home was raided in the city of Macaé, near Rio, “had a religious motivation” and “claimed [Lady Gaga] was a Satanist”.
In an Instagram post, Lady Gaga has expressed gratitude for the enormous crowd.
“Nothing could prepare me for the feeling I had during last night’s show – the absolute pride and joy I felt singing for the people of Brazil,” she wrote. “The sight of the crowd during my opening songs took my breath away. Your heart shines so bright, your culture is so vibrant and special, I hope you know how grateful I am to have shared this historical moment with you.”
Her free beach concert stood out at a time of surging ticket prices for live music around the world as concertgoers pay budget-busting costs to see their favourite artists.
Last month Lady Gaga performed at Coachella Valley music festival in California, where tickets fetched upwards of $600 for one weekend. The high prices of tickets for her upcoming shows in Australia have also attracted criticism locally.
Last May, superstar Madonna also performed on Copacabana beach, playing the final show of her latest world tower for some 1.6 million fans on the sprawling sands.
