A tragedy seems to have been avoided at the Faculty of Sciences in Lisbon, Portugal. Alerted by American intelligence, the local judicial police arrested an 18-year-old young man on Thursday, February 10. This computer engineering student is suspected of having prepared a mass shooting which was to take place on his campus.
At the time of his arrest on Thursday, Joao had been tailed by the police for a week. The agents had been put on his track thanks to the FBI, which had spotted his “suspicious activities on the darknet and social networks”. According to Jornal i, a Portuguese daily, the young man is particularly “addicted to videos of massacres in schools”.
A “thwarted attack”
The searches carried out at his home led to the seizure of a katana, knives, a crossbow with arrows, but also bottles filled with gasoline and a gas bottle. All this, accompanied by what seems to be the detailed plan of an attack prepared for months. According to the first elements of the investigation, the killing was to take place this Friday, exam day.
Evoking a “thwarted attack”, the director of Jornal i, Vitor Rainho, is surprised in his editorial that a young Portuguese student can attract the attention of American intelligence. “It’s amazing how the FBI manages to have ears and eyes all over the world,” he said.
In the local press, the offending student is described as “shy, introverted” and “addicted to computers”. Brought before justice this Friday morning, he would not, a priori, have any religious or racial motivations. A police source indicates that he could suffer from “mental disorders”.
