Brazil Arrests Members Of ISIS-Linked Group Plotting Terrorist Acts Ahead Of Olympics

Brazil Arrests Members Of ISIS-Linked Group Plotting Terrorist Acts Ahead Of Olympics

by Tyler Durden

Jul 21, 2016 10:44 AM


Perhaps taking a cue from recent events in Turkey, moments ago Reuters reported that Brazil's federal police began an anti-terrorism operation early Thursday, just over two weeks before the Olympics start in Rio de Janeiro, a justice ministry source told Reuters. The source said that federal police had arrested members of a group that was preparing acts of terrorism. It was unclear where the operation was taking place or what the specifics of the operation were.

As WSJ adds, the 10 Brazilians arrested allegedly had links the Islamic State. Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes said at a late-morning press conference that the operation had been coordinated and carried out by members of Brazil’s armed forces and the ABIN, the country’s equivalent of the CIA, with help from international intelligence agencies. Mr. de Moraes said that two other suspects are being sought. It wasn’t immediately clear where the arrests had occurred.

Mr. de Moraes said the suspects were members of a terrorist cell that had communicated via an encrypted messaging service, and had gone from exchanging comments about the Islamic State to making preparations for an attack.



Mr. de Moraes said that one of the suspects had tried to purchase an AK-47 rifle in Paraguay, which shares a porous border area with Brazil and Argentina. That region is notorious for money-laundering and drugs and arms trafficking. It wasn’t clear whether that purchase had been made.



Mr. de Moraes said there was no clear target for the alleged attacks. But the arrests are certain to elevate concerns about the possibility of a terrorist attack at the Games and raise additional questions over Brazil’s security preparations.



An estimated 500,000 tourists and athletes are expected to descend on Rio for the Games, including about 200,000 from the United States.

Curiously this takes place just day after the NYT reported that a delegation of U.S. activists from the Black Lives Matter movement, who were on a 4 day visit to Rio, warned that the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games could prove deadly for the city's poor black people. The American activists were on a four-day visit to Rio aimed at highlighting the risks posed by the giant Olympic security apparatus in a country where a United Nations report has concluded law enforcement officers are responsible for a "significant portion" of the nearly 60,000 annual violent deaths.

"It's important that we stand with each other because we know this violence is connected," said Daunasia Yancey, a Black Lives Matter activist from Boston. "Anti-black violence is global and our resistance is global."

Perhaps the two events are related, or perhaps Brazil is merely already setting the stage for having a convenient scapegoat if the olympics, for which the country is woefully unprepared, end which in a worst case scenario, may even result in casualties.