France’s interior ministry said security authorities had arrested a Chechen teenager on suspicion of planning an “Islamist-instigated” attack at an Olympic soccer match this summer.
The State Department said its domestic intelligence agency, DGSI, had arrested an 18-year-old man of Chechnya in Saint-Étienne, southeastern France, calling it “the first thwarted attack on the Olympics.”
France has raised its highest level of alert for attacks ahead of the Paris Olympics, which are expected to attract around 10 million visitors and 10,000 athletes.
The sport will be mainly held in the capital, but some competitions and individual events will also be held in other towns and cities across France.
The ministry said the man arrested was suspected of “actively preparing an attack on the Geoffroy-Guichard Stadium.” [in Saint-Etienne] During a football match there, he intended to attack not only the spectators but also the security forces and die as a martyr.”
The revelations are likely to rattle nerves in France, where organisers face ongoing questions about the risk of an attack that would seriously tarnish the world’s biggest sporting event.
Most of the concern centers on the opening ceremony on July 26, which will take place along a four-mile stretch of the Seine river and mark the first time the Summer Olympics will kick off outside a track and field stadium.
Policing the capital’s vast swaths is a huge challenge, with 45,000 police on duty and large swaths of the city centre off-limits to everyone but ticket holders and locals.
France has been a target for Islamist attackers over the past decade, many of them inspired by al-Qaida or the Islamic State (IS). Last October, a radicalized 20-year-old Chechen who had pledged allegiance to IS killed a teacher in the northern French town of Arras.
The Olympic torch relay is underway in France, where a “security bubble” of 100 officers, including counter-drone experts and anti-terrorism police, has been deployed.
In the first three weeks of the 7,500-mile (12,000-kilometer) journey, 78 people were arrested for attempting to disrupt the relay and 30 suspicious drones were intercepted, according to figures released by the Home Office this week.
The Olympics have come under attack before, most notoriously in 1972 in Munich and 1996 in Atlanta.
