Russia’s Most Wanted Terrorist Targets Olympic Games

Russia’s Most Wanted Terrorist Targets Olympic Games

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

The biathlon games in Sochi, 2012 (123rf)
The biathlon games in Sochi, 2012 (123rf)

The Russian authorities are on high alert following the recent attacks in Volgograd. With the Winter Olympics in Sochi opening on 7 February, there are serious concerns that spectators and athletes will be targets of future attacks.

DW reports that Russia’s most wanted terrorist, Doku Umarov, recently declared that he is prepared to use “maximum force” to prevent the Olympics from occurring. In a July 2013 video message, Umarov called on his followers to use “any methods allowed by the almighty Allah” to sabotage the games. According to Defense News Umarov’s call to violence is taken seriously by his followers — and by Russian law enforcement.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

When Umarov gives an order, as he did one and a half years ago, not to attack civilian targets, then most of the terror cells follow his lead,” Gerhard Mangott, a political science professor at the University of Innsbruck, told Deutsche Welle. “So when he says, as he did a couple of months ago, that the Olympics are being held ‘on the bones of our ancestors,’ as he put it, and therefore civilian targets should again be attacked, then that is something terror cells will comply with,” Mangott explained.

Umarov was born in the southern Chechen village of Kharshenoi. He earned an engineering degree from state-run Grozny Oil Institute. Once a fighter against Russia in the first Chechen war in 1994, Umarov rose to become a rebel leader in 2006.