It was the news Giorgos Voulgarakis did not want to hear. Eight hours before the Greek public order minister was due to begin briefing FBI and CIA officials in Washington on security arrangements for the Olympics, three bombs exploded outside a police station in an Athens suburb.
No one was injured in Wednesday’s blasts, and the damage to cars and buildings in the suburb of Kallithea was minor compared with the blow they dealt to confidence in Athens’s ability to provide adequate security at the XXIVth Olympiad.
Coming exactly 100 days before the start of the games, the damage was as much symbolic as actual. Voulgarakis was quick to play down the bombs’ significance to his United States hosts, blaming the attack on local ”extremists inside Greece with no particular strength or perspective”.
But they succeeded in refocusing attention on the halting preparations for the games, which have been dogged by delays and security fears for months.
The blasts drew reaction from governments, sporting bodies and athletes around the world, but it is the American audience that is the most crucial to Athens’s chances of delivering a successful games. Americans are notoriously jumpy about travel and any sign of US reluctance could fundamentally undermine Greek assurances that the games will go ahead as normal in safe, not to mention completed, stadiums.
In Athens and across the Olympic movement officials sought to play down the significance of the blasts.
Greek Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis appeared on television: ”This is an isolated incident which does not affect whatsoever the safety of the Olympic preparation. Our cooperation with the [European Union], Nato and the US authorities guarantees the safety of the Athens Olympics,” he said.
”A police station rather than an Olympic venue had been hit because it was the Greek authorities that were targeted and not the games,” said Giorgos Angelakkos, who heads the police force in Athens’s Greater Attica region.
Officials on the United Kingdom-led advisory board monitoring security preparations for the games echoed Greek officials. One diplomat based in Athens said that until proven otherwise it would be premature to link the blasts to the games.
”There have been 90 such bomb blasts around Greece over the past year,” they said. ”With few exceptions they have been carried out by anarchists who have not been protesting about the Olympics.”
Not all voices were united in playing down the attack. One Greek counter-terrorism expert said the fact that the timebombs were more sophisticated than similar devices used in other attacks was worrying.
The head of the Australian Olympic Committee, Bob Elphinston, said it was possible some individual athletes might pull out. ”We would never stand in the way of any athlete making a personal choice in that regard,” he said.
Jean-Michel Brun, the head of France’s Olympic mission in Athens, said officials were considering sending athletes back to France as soon as they had finished their events.
Suspicion about the responsibility for the triple blasts — as yet unclaimed — is likely to fall on radical groups linked to the recently dismantled terror group November 17.
Last month Voulgarakis said the terror network had not only been effectively crippled, after the arrest and imprisonment of its members, ”but taken off the list of potential threats to the games”. Instead, it was al-Qaeda and its ever-expanding network of affiliated groups that posed a real threat. ”We have a 100% clear picture of the security situation in this country. The games will be 120% safe,” the minister said in an interview.
Greece’s proximity to Africa and the volatile Middle East, its extensive coastline and porous borders, have raised fears that it is prone to attack. Athens’s response is a security budget of $1-billion.
Since being forced to review security arrangements in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Greeks have been advised by a seven-country board of diplomats, spies and counter-terrorism officials led by the UK. Other members include the US, Spain and Israel, all countries whose athletes could be targets for attacks by Islamist extremists.
The advisory board holds weekly meetings with the Greek minister of public order.
Two teams of officers from London’s Metropolitan police force are working in the Greek capital. One is advising on ”post-November 17 operations” and the other on the games.
Peter Ryan who oversaw security during the Olympic Games in Sydney and Salt Lake City, is playing a lead role in the Athens operation.
Measures planned this August include more than 50 000 police and soldiers, more than 1 400 security cameras, and aerial surveillance by helicopters and Awacs aircraft. In an unprecedented step Greece has also sought help from Nato in the form of extra sea and air patrols. Throughout the 16-day event, a no-fly zone will be imposed around Olympic venues and other sites.
But Wedesday’s explosions have proved that for all the draconian steps, it is still easy to send a shiver through what is likely to be the world’s most significant sports event. — Â