SAO PAULO - TWO Brazilian teenagers were arrested on the weekend for allegedly plotting to smuggle cellphones into a prison using a kite, reports said on Sunday.

According to police, the two unidentified adolescents were arrested late on Saturday with two kites and mobile phones inside a building in Tremembe, a town outside Sao Paulo, the G1 news website reported.

Police said the two confessed to planning the operation, and said they were to have received US$175 (S$255) through an ex-girlfriend of a prisoner in the town's Tarcizo Leonce Pinheiro Cintra penitentiary.

Incarcerated criminals in Brazil often go to great lengths to acquire and use mobile telephones to keep illicit businesses running from behind bars.

On Friday, G1 reported, a prisoner being transferred from a temporary detention center in Tremembe to a Sao Paulo prison set off a metal detector.

Wardens found a mobile phone, battery and charger inserted in his anus. -- AFP