This week, four quarter-finals are played in the Champions League. All have been threatened by the terrorist group IS.
“Uefa is aware of alleged terrorist threats against this week’s Champions League matches and is in close contact with the authorities,” the confederation writes in a statement. All matches are still scheduled to take place, with appropriate security arrangements in place.
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The threat comes just weeks after the attack on the Crocus city hall in Moscow, in which more than 100 people were killed, and which the IS branch IS Khorasan claimed.
“Kill them wherever you find them”
The group, which is also called IS-K, took shape around Afghanistan around 2015 and has the same ideology as IS in general. After several years of carrying out hundreds of attacks targeting the Taliban, the group changed tactics in 2022 and began carrying out attacks targeting other countries.
In January, IS launched a form of global “campaign” titled “Kill them wherever you find them”, calling on followers to carry out attacks on large gatherings and meeting places in the West – as revenge for the people who have been killed in Gaza, says Mina Al -Lami, BBC jihadist expert, i SVT’s Foreign Office.
– The concern this year is that we have two major sporting events in Europe, the soccer European Championship and the Olympics in Paris this summer, which the jihadists are keeping an eye on. Already now you can see that they are sending out messages and posters calling for attacks.
No threats to ESC
An event that has raised concerns about possible security threats is the Eurovision song contest in Malmö. Both experts that the Foreign Office has spoken to say that they are not aware of specific threats to this year’s competition – but that the risk still remains.
– In extremist Islamist circles, there has been negative propaganda against the ESC as it is seen as a symbol of what these extremists see as the decadent Western culture, says Hans-Jakob Schindler, IS expert in the UN Security Council.
See the whole The Foreign Office’s “IS: The Return” on SVT Play.