No known terrorist threat to Rio Olympics: official

BRASILIA (Brazil) — Brazil is preparing to deal with a terrorist attack at the Rio Olympics but has no information of any planned plots, the country’s intelligence chief told AFP yesterday.

“We have no information about a terrorist cell preparing in Brazil. Our risk assessment does not indicate this, but we are working permanently as if the threat were imminent, as if this could happen tomorrow,” Mr Wilson Trezza, director of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, said.

With nine months before the first Summer Games in South America, Brazilian security officials say they will be able to stop any threat. Fears have risen since the attacks two weeks ago in Paris, including outside the national football stadium, that left at least 130 people dead.

Brazil is working so as “not to be taken by surprise,” Mr Trezza said at a seminar in the capital Brasilia.

Brazil has no history of conflict with Islamist or other violent radical groups. However, with 10,500 athletes from 206 countries and dozens of heads of state and large numbers of tourists, the Olympics are considered a potential target.

Brazil says it will deploy 85,000 security personnel, double the number used during the 2012 London Olympics.

“It will be the biggest integrated security operation in the history of Brazil,” said Sports Minister George Hilton. AFP