BUDAPEST, Hungary — Threats to a string of European Olympic offices are reviving a question that has haunted preparations for the Winter Games next month: Is it safe to go to Sochi?
European Olympic authorities, whose countries have faced terrorist threats and attacks in the past, largely shrugged off the new menacing messages as a hoax, a marginal phenomenon that security experts say is common ahead of big events.
Some members of the U.S. Congress aren’t so sure. They say Russia isn’t doing enough to assure that athletes will be protected at the Feb. 7-23 games, happening not far from an Islamic insurgency that Russia’s huge security apparatus has struggled for two decades to quell.
Russia might run greater risks in towns outside the tightly controlled Olympic zone. Suicide bombs last month a few hundred miles away have increased concerns, and an Islamic warlord has urged his followers to attack the Sochi Olympics, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pet project.
The threats reported Wednesday appeared to be more anodyne.
They were first revealed by Hungarian sports officials, who announced they had received an e-mail in Russian and English threatening Hungarian athletes with terrorist attacks.
The International Olympic Committee insisted it takes credible threats seriously, but “in this case it seems like the e-mail sent to the Hungarian Olympic Committee contains no threat and appears to be a random message from a member of the public.”
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said he remains confident in Russia’s Olympic organizers.
Talking to reporters in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday, he said, “Security is always a matter of concern, not only in the Olympic Games but at every big event, whether it’s sport or any other. That is unfortunately the world we are living in.
“But we are very confident, and we know the Russian authorities together with their many partners internationally are doing everything to organize the games in a safe and secure way.”
The Hungarian Olympic Committee said it had received a message from the organizers of the Sochi Games saying: “Threat described in the email sent to your address is not real.”
It turned out that Olympic committees from several other European countries, including Britain, Germany, Italy and Austria, had received similar messages but hadn’t publicly reported them.
A spokeswoman for Switzerland’s Olympic committee said similar threats were common so close to the Winter Games and athletes and officials would base their travel plans instead on the assessment of security officials — not on threats.
