PRAGUE, Czech Republic-
On the sun-dappled streets of Prague’s Jewish Quarter, undercover officers mingle with the crowds, and police commandos clad in body armor and ammunition belts size up tourists with a steely stare.
It has been like this since Sept. 23, when the capital went on high alert after counterterrorism officials received a foreign intelligence warning of a clear and present danger: a plot, a prominent Czech newspaper reported, that might have involved abducting and killing dozens of Jews.
Authorities characterize the threat as “unprecedented.” But because they are not elaborating, it is also unseen and unexplained.
“We got from our partners abroad very serious information. For the first time, we had concrete information from a very trustworthy source pointing to an imminent threat,” Jan Subert, chief spokesman for the counterintelligence agency BIS, told The Associated Press in an interview.
Subert would not specify the target, though he said the intelligence clearly indicated not only what it was, but “the way the attack would be carried out.”
“At this moment, I can say the threat is still here,” he added.
Subert said Jewish interests were at risk. But he would neither confirm nor deny a report in the Mlada Fronta Dnes newspaper that cited intelligence sources as saying Islamic militants planned to abduct worshippers in one of Prague’s six synagogues last month on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, barricade themselves inside and make vague demands before blowing up the temple, killing everyone inside.
Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek refused to elaborate, saying only that “measures and information provided to the public were, and are, in proportion to the threat.”
Interior Minister Ivan Langer, who oversees the police forces, was even more cryptic: Intelligence analysts, he said, evaluated the information and concluded it was “serious–the most serious ever.”
Locals are chafing under the unusual security.
“Nothing like that has ever happened here, and I don’t think it ever will,” scoffed Ljubov Sagajdak, 51, who sells enameled pottery in the Jewish Quarter and contends the alert has frightened away customers. On most days, the district teems with Israelis and other tourists from around the world.
Not since the communist era has there been such a strong police presence on Wenceslas Square, ground zero for the 1989 Velvet Revolution, or at Prague’s international airport, train stations, stadiums, bus depots and major monuments, where knots of officers armed with automatic rifles patrol with dogs. Bolstering the visible security, officials say, are numerous plainclothes officers working undercover.
“It’s a very serious matter,” conceded Frantisek Banyai, the head of Prague’s Jewish community, reduced during World War II from 120,000 people to just a few thousand today.
“We have to rely on the responsibility of the state, and no state can guarantee 100 percent security,” said Banyai, whose office is protected by closed-circuit TV and private guards with shaved heads and side arms.
In an interview in his office overlooking Prague’s medieval castle, Frantisek Bublan–a former interior minister who headed the BIS from 2001-2004 and now chairs a parliamentary committee on security–said the first word that a plot might be in the works came in June from an undisclosed European country.
He said subsequent and more detailed intelligence he has seen does not corroborate the reports that Jews were targets.
“But that doesn’t mean we can underestimate the information,” Bublan said. “It’s difficult for the government because they have to act. They cannot underestimate or discount it. … We do have soft targets and they’re very vulnerable.”
Subert, the BIS spokesman, ticks off a long list of reasons why the Czech Republic–a stalwart ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism–is a potential target.
The country, a fledgling member of NATO and the European Union, has troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In July, U.S. officials finished surveying possible locations for a missile defense base. Prague also hosts the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S.-funded broadcaster that beams programming to the Arab world.
In 1998, Subert disclosed, Czech authorities thwarted a plot to attack the Radio Free Europe building after intercepting a message from Baghdad to an Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague. The message indicated Iraq was intent on stopping broadcasts to Iraq and contained details of how an attack would be carried out, he told the AP.
“There also are risks that may come in the future,” the BIS cautions in an undated memo made available to the AP.
“Europe can be threatened by an influx of experienced Islamic fighters, who gather their experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Radical Islamic and terrorist groups also can, in the future, try to use Czech territory for logistical support for their activities carried out anywhere in the world,” it said.
Jana Doksanska, who sells antique clocks on the edge of the Jewish Quarter, doesn’t know what to make of the threat.
She was working on Sept. 23, a sunny Saturday–coincidentally, officials say, the day that new U.S. ambassador Richard W. Graber arrived to take up his post–when the alert began.
“It was completely normal: a lot of customers, no stress,” said Doksanska. “But I’m glad they took the security measures they did. Maybe that’s why I feel so calm.”
