- An e-mailed threat to national Olympic committees isn’t seen as credible, IOC says
- The U.S. Olympic Committee and several European countries received the threat
- The warnings come amid a Russian security clampdown ahead of the Sochi games
- Police are hunting suspected Islamist insurgents, including so-called black widows
(CNN) — Olympic officials discounted an e-mailed threat to the upcoming Winter Games in the Russian city of Sochi on Wednesday, but the reported warning raised new concerns about security at the events.
Olympic organizing committees in the United States and several European countries got an e-mailed warning of a terrorist attack against visitors to Sochi, where President Vladimir Putin’s government has mounted a massive security effort to protect the events.
“The IOC takes security very seriously and passes on any credible information to the relevant security services,” International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Sandrine Tonge told CNN. But the e-mail received by the national organizations “contains no threat and appears to be a random message from a member of the public,” she said.
At least two countries, Slovakia and Hungary, reported receiving e-mails in English that warned about threats to their citizens and Olympic athletes. The Olympic committees for Italy and Germany also confirmed that they had received the e-mail. Others said the warnings had been forwarded to them from other countries or the IOC.
The e-mail received in Hungary suggested that “there might be a terrorist attack against nationals of Hungary and the Hungarian team, and that members of the team may be blown up,” Zsigmond Nagy, director for international relations for Hungary’s National Olympic Committee, told CNN. Nagy said the Hungarian Olympic Committee had shared the letter with the organizers of the Sochi Winter Olympics as well as the IOC.
Hungary’s counterterrorism agency was analyzing the e-mail, but Hungary does not intend to change its plans to attend the Games in Sochi, Nagy said.
The U.S. Olympic Committee also received the message and sent it “to the appropriate authorities,” committee chief Scott Blackmun said.
“The safety and security of Team USA is our top priority,” he said in a written statement. “As is always the case, we are working with the U.S. Department of State, the local organizers and the relevant law enforcement agencies in an effort to ensure that our delegation and other Americans traveling to Sochi are safe.”
Medvedev: Huge security buildup
The warnings come as Russian authorities are clamping down on suspected Islamic militants in the region surrounding Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea coast. Russia has been battling a low-level Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus region for more than a decade, and militants have vowed to strike at the Olympics.
Among those hunted by Russian security forces are three women suspected of being “black widows” — a group of women who have carried out high-profile suicide bombings after government forces killed their insurgent husbands.
Police have handed out fliers with the women’s names and pictures to hotels in Rostov-on-Don, a southwestern Russian town through which the Olympic Torch relay was due to pass Wednesday, and in the Sochi area.
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