(22 Jan 2014) The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday sought to play down fears that the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi would be a target for militants, after European Olympic offices received a string of threats.
Speaking during a visit to Rio de Janeiro, which will host the Olympics in 2016, IOC President Thomas Bach told journalists that "security is always a matter of concern, not only in the Olympic Games but at every big event. Whether it's sport or whether it's any other. That is unfortunately the world we are living in."
Hungarian sports officials announced on Wednesday they had received an email in Russian and English threatening Hungarian athletes.
It turned out that Olympic committees from several other European countries, including Britain, Germany, Italy and Austria had received similar messages but hadn't publicly reported them.
Suicide bomb attacks last month a few hundred kilometres (miles) away from Sochi have increased concerns and an Islamic warlord has urged his followers to attack the Sochi Olympics which is Russian President Vladimir Putin's pet project.
"We know the Russian authorities, together with their many partners internationally, are doing everything to organise the games in a safe and secure way," Bach said on Wednesday in Brazil.
Some members of the US Congress aren't so sure.
They say Russia isn't doing enough to assure that athletes will be protected at the Winter games, to be held from 7-23 February, not far from an Islamic insurgency that Russia's huge security apparatus has struggled to quell for two decades.
European Olympic authorities, whose countries have faced both threats and attacks in the past, largely shrugged off the menacing messages as a hoax, a marginal phenomenon that security experts say is common ahead of big events.
Find out more about AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
Twitter: [ Ссылка ]
Facebook: [ Ссылка ]
Instagram: [ Ссылка ]
You can license this story through AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
