Police in Russia are warning that a female “black widow” suicide bomber may already be in Sochi — and operating inside the so-called “ring of steel” security cordon hyped by President Putin for next month’s winter Olympic Games, according to a published report.
Posters and flyers with a photograph of the woman, identified as 22-year-old Ruzanna Ibragimova, started going up around Sochi hotels over the weekend and at the host city’s airport, ABC News reported.
She is the widow of a terrorist reportedly killed last year in a shoot-out with police, Ibragimova goes by the nickname Salima and has a 10-centimeter scar across her left cheek, Russian authorities said. She also walks with a pronounced limp and has a stiff left arm that doesn’t bend at the elbow, authorities said.
The search for Salima intensified as a new video surfaced on Monday promising attacks on the Winter Olympics. Posted on a Jihadi web site, the clip shows two men –believed to be the suicide bombers in last month’s deadly twin Volgograd bombings — delivering a message from the grave:
“We’ve prepared a present for you and all tourists who’ll come over. If you will hold the Olympics, you’ll get a present from us for the Muslim blood that’s been spilled,” they warn.
Even as President Putin vowed on Monday that the Sochi Olympics will be safe and secure, the video threat and the black window scare have U.S. officials increasingly concerned about the games beginning in just over two weeks.
“It’s a very serious fear,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.
A security expert told ABC News that if Ibragimova was able to penetrate Sochi’s security perimeter, and is inside biding her time, the breach “really raises questions about the strength of the Russia security apparatus.”
“The specific worry is that she’s a woman and because of that it’s easier for women to infiltrate indoor or outdoor venues, that she could be a bomb carrier,” said security expert, Christopher Swift, a Georgetown University professor who has studied militant groups in the North Caucasus.