Terrorist threat to Winter Olympics

We ignore international trends at our peril,

Things are getting very ugly in Kiev, Ukraine.

This morning there was this report on Radio NZ (an interview with Tom Barton who also works for RT). I could find no replication anywhere in the world media until I came across this from Israeli Homeland Security – which I would never choose as a reliable source.

I am deeply puzzled why this was covered by Radio NZ (unless it is the time zone) or why they should depart from the herd by including this item. There was nothing in their 'print' version.

If true it would have the fingerprints of Prince Bandar Bush all over it. He has already threatened Putin.

Chechen Islamic terrorists threaten February 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi,

Islamic rebels threaten to attack the winter Olympics next year, according to HLS News Wire.

iHLS,

26 January, 2013

On Wednesday Doku Umarov, a leading Chechen Islamic rebel, issued a call to Islamist militants throughout the North Caucasus to begin and plan for attacks to disrupt the February 2014 Winter Olympics which will be held in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

The Russian government views the games the same way China did during the 2008 Summer Olympics — as an opportunity to show Russia’s economic and technological achievements. Putin’s government will spend a total of $51 billion on the games, making them the most expensive Winter Games in history.

Umarov called on Islamic militants in the region to “do their utmost to derail” the games, which he described as “satanic dances on the bones of our ancestors.”

“We have the obligation to use all means to prevent this,” he said in a video posted on a rebel Web site on Wednesday.

Epoch Times reports that this is a reversal for Umarov, who last year urged his fighters to avoid civilian targets because Russians in Moscow were taking to the streets en masse to protest against Putin.

Security experts in Russia and other regions said that securing the games from acts of terrorism would be a daunting task. Violent Islamic insurgency has been on-going across the North Caucasus mountains overlooking Sochi.

Initially, the Islamic insurgency was confined to Chechnya, but after Russia, in two rounds of war in the 1990s, brutally suppressed the rebellion, the militants have shifted their base of operations to Dagestan. Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent six months last year in Dagestan.

The Epoch Times quotes the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee as saying that ensuring security at the games is “the responsibility of the state” and will be its priority.

“We are confident that the games will be safe and comfortable for all as guaranteed by the Russian state,” the committee said.

Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said in a statement on Wednesday that it is working to eliminate threats at all international sporting events in the country including the Olympics.

Officials said that they aim “to identify and avert various threats, including those of terrorism.”

This is Putin's latest statement on the Sochi Olympics

Meanwhile in Kiev

Rioters beat up police