“Top Hill lawmakers concerned about Olympic security, amid new terror threats and attacks”
Published January 19, 2014
SNIPPET: “On Sunday, in a new video that was posted on the website of the Chechen militant group Vilayat Dagestan, two militants vowed that tourists and Russians attending the games would not be safe.
In the video, the Russian-speaking men sitting in front of black banners with Arabic verses warn Putin that if the games are held, “we will give you a present for the innocent Muslim blood being spilled all around the world.”
They add that “for the tourists who come there will be a present, too.”
On Friday, nine people were injured when a bomb exploded in the Russian southern province of Dagestan, which has become the center of an Islamist insurgency that has spread across the Caucasus region after two separatist wars in Chechnya.”
SNIP: “King said he is not only concerned about the Olympics, but that other major sporting events could be targets in the future, including the World Cup in Brazil.
“I’m afraid it will be a concern anywhere in the future,” he said.”
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4172/dagestan-terrorism-russia
“Dagestan: New Epicenter of Muslim Terrorism in Russia”
by Lawrence A. Franklin
February 14, 2014 at 4:00 am
SNIPPET: “According to a survey with 6,000 respondents, the ranks of the jihad are being filled by ever-younger Dagestanis. Dagestan is eclipsing Chechnya as the seat of the most violent insurgency against Russia.
The extremist leaders have targeted their fellow Muslim leaders thought to be too mild.
Dagestan, the largest republic of the north Caucasus, can best be described in negative superlatives. It is probably the most violent spot in the entire Russian Federation.[1] The administrative bureaucracy of the republic’s capital, Makhachkala, is among the most corrupt.[2] The ethnic and linguistic diversity of Dagestan is the most complex among Russia’s Republics.[3] Its topography is arguably the most forbidding in the Russian Eurasian landmass. Religiously, it is also the most radical Muslim entity in the Russian state. Moreover, in part, because of Dagestan’s difficult terrain and the fabled fighting ability of Dagestani mountain peoples, Moscow has found that suppressing jihadists in Dagestan is even more difficult than in their campaigns in Chechnya.
The February 6, 2014 raid of a terrorist hideout in the Dagestani town of Izerbash by Russian Security Police — resulting in the deaths of suspects who were allegedly planning an attack on the Sochi Olympics — underscores that the Republic of Dagestan has become the epicenter of extremist-Muslim terrorism in Russia.”