Federal prosecutors in Brazil indicted 11 people for plotting to recruit jihadists to send to Syria and planning to form an ISIS cell in Brazil, court documents revealed, the Guardian reported.
This was the second copycat group in two years that Brazil has successfully taken down.
11 alleged militants were charged with trying to establish #ISIS cell in Brazil & attempting to recruit jihadists to travel to #Syria. https://t.co/kGZrwFSzZo
— CEP (@FightExtremism) May 18, 2018
Ten were arrested prior to the 2016 Olympics in Rio for discussing ISIS plots during the games.
Social media led police to the suspected ISIS radicals after messages linked phone numbers to a Brazilian arrested in Spain for belonging to a jihadist group there.
The Brazilian suspects had engaged in chat group conversations that referred to duplicating the 2017 attack on the London Bridge during Carnival in Rio de Janeiro or Salvador to get the most casualties.
All but two of the 11 suspects are free pending trial. Two of the Brazilians are being held in a maximum-security prison, according to a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office for the state of Goiás in central Brazil.
The suspects did not know each other outside of social media.
The Brazilian government called the group “absolutely amateur,” but nonetheless dangerous.
