Islamic militant group threatening attacks at Sochi Olympics
Posted January 20, 2014 7:34 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
MOSCOW (NEWS1130) – Russia’s counter-terrorism agency says it’s studying a video posted by an Islamic militant group that asserted responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 34 people last month and is threatening to strike the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Security experts say the Russians are right in taking the threat seriously.
The video was posted online Sunday by a militant group in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus. The Olympic host city of Sochi lies only 500 kilometres west of Dagestan.
Two Russian-speaking men featured in the video are identified as members of Ansar al-Sunna, the name of a Jihadist group operating in Iraq. It was unclear whether the men in the video had received funding or training from that group or only adopted its name.
There was no confirmation the two men were the suicide bombers who struck the southern Russian city of Volgograd last month as the video claims. Scores of people were also injured by the bombings of a train station and a bus.
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee says it is studying the video and would have no immediate comment. The video couldn’t be viewed in Russia, where Internet providers cut access to it under a law that bans the “dissemination of extremist materials.”
