Saturday brought apparent warnings from Anonymous that the hacker collective had uncovered evidence of planned ISIS-inspired assaults on November 22nd events worldwide.
By Saturday afternoon the FBI office in Atlanta had issued a statement regarding the warnings that said it did “have specific or credible information of an attack” on a WWE event in Atlanta and Anonymous’s most well-known social media outlet, @YourAnonNews, had tweeted that they “did not spread any rumors about possible future ISIS attacks, and frankly, we do not know where the rumors come from.” Disavowals aside, the warnings still had an effect, causing heavy metal outfit Five Finger Death Punch to cancel a concert in Milan, Italy.
Billboard reported the news and linked the group’s Facebook, where they posted the following statement:
As some of you may be aware, there were many rumors today that the Milan show on Sunday, November 22nd will be targeted in a next wave of terror attacks like we saw in Paris last week. We did our best in a very short amount of time to work with the local promoter and authorities to ensure that security would be adequate. Unfortunately, we did not receive confirmation in time to satisfy our requirements and to ensure that our fans would be safe at the event. Therefore, we were forced to postpone the show to a later date. Please stay tuned for more info.
If participants in any of the events that seemed under threat had good reason to go overboard with caution it was probably Five Finger Death Punch—a group not unlike Eagles of Death Metal, who barely made it out of Paris’s Bataclan venue alive on November 13 before jihadist gunmen took 89 lives.
As of Sunday night U.S. Eastern Time none of the attacks warned about had materialized.
Photos by Mat Hayward / Getty Images