The Judiciary Police of Portugal said it had prevented, this Thursday (10), a terrorist attack on the University of Lisbon. According to the first information, an 18-year-old suspect was arrested with bladed weapons that would be used in the attack.
The name of the detainee was not released, but according to the local press he is from the city of Fátima, 130 kilometers from the Portuguese capital. The suspect would be an engineering student at the Faculty of Science of the institution and was described as someone with a low profile and introvert, with a habit of being a massive consumer of information about school massacres.
The attack had been planned for months and would take place this Friday (11), according to the PJ. The University of Lisbon concentrates a large number of Brazilian students, the foreign nationality most present in Portuguese higher education. According to data from the institution itself, in the 2017/18 academic year, there were 1,922 Brazilian students on campus, out of a universe of 9,000 foreigners and 50,000 in total.
Police have not disclosed so far whether any possible religious motives for the attack are known. Flammable materials, such as gasoline, a set of knives and a bow and arrow, were seized at the suspect’s house – the same type of weapon used in October last year by a man in Kongsberg, Norway, in an attack that left five dead and two injured.
The Judiciary Police also reported that they found a document on the detainee’s computer that detailed the student’s plan. According to the report, the idea was to kill as many people as possible.
“The suspect arrested in flagrante delicto for the possession of the aforementioned weapons is also indicted for the practice of the crime of terrorism”, said the statement from the authorities. The judicial interrogation of the suspect is expected to take place this Friday.
According to CNN Portugal, the operation started with the help of the FBI, the US federal police. The American authorities would have intercepted the young man’s conversations on the internet in which he spoke about his intention to commit the attack. Portuguese police will give more details of the case at a press conference.
Such attacks are rare in Portugal, which is considered the fourth most peaceful country in the world, according to the Global Peace Index, which measures the level of peace and the absence of violence in 163 nations.
The frequency of terrorist attacks on educational institutions, however, has grown in other countries. In the US, for example, the newspaper The Washington Post did a survey in June last year and counted 14 school shootings during school hours in six months.
After that, attacks on schools in Dallas, Texas, and Detroit, Michigan were highlighted. The first case occurred in October, when an 18-year-old student shot four students after a fight. In the second, two months later, a 15-year-old teenager killed four people – he will respond as an adult in court to terrorism charges.
In Russia, an 18-year-old student armed with a rifle opened fire last September on a university in the city of Perm, killing at least six people and injuring 24. At the time, videos posted on social media show panicked students jumping from the institution’s first-floor windows in an attempt to escape.
