Islamic State threat hangs over Russia World Cup

While moribund in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State group poses a real threat to Russia’s World Cup that must be taken seriously, security experts warn.

Alarm bells have been ringing since disturbing photo-montages began to appear on social media late last year, the work of the IS propaganda arm known as the Wafa Media Foundation.

Crude and explicit, they show superstars such as Lionel Messi and Neymar dressed in the frighteningly familiar orange suits used for videotaped executions.

Lying on the ground, with knives up against their throats or dying in flames, the message accompanying them was blunt: “You will not enjoy security until we live it in Muslim countries,” the posts say.

Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Troy Souza, authors of a report published last month by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) on the dangers IS poses to the June 14 to July 15 World Cup, say the propaganda campaign unfurled by IS was “unprecedented.”

“In just the past few years, there have been numerous successful terror attacks or thwarted plots in Russia by terrorists linked to or inspired by the Islamic state,” they write. “This suggests the group may have the capacity to launch attacks in Russia during the World Cup.”

— AFP