Fed: Sydney's greatest Games ever could have been the bloodiest

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Fed: Sydney's greatest Games ever could have been the bloodiest

By Sharon Labi

SYDNEY, Dec 4 AAP - Sydney's Olympics were billed as the best games ever but they couldso easily have gone down in history as being the bloodiest.

The possibility of a terrorist attack was raised by ASIO, by visiting terrorism expertsand via a plot inadvertently uncovered by authorities in New Zealand.

But what credence was giving to those warnings? Perhaps it was sheer luck and not the$180 million spent nor the 15,000 strong army of security personnel that averted a strikeon the Sydney Games.

Reports this week that Jemaah Islamiah (JI) operatives planned to target the Gamesnow make those warnings as far back as 1995 seem far more real.

Nearly half a million spectators poured into Homebush Bay each day of the prestigioussporting competition which attracted massive worldwide television audiences.

The Games would have given terrorists an ideal venue to maximise carnage and exposurefor their cause.

But for some reason JI's reported chief in Australia, Abdul Rahim, rejected the planned attack.

The plot is said to have been the brainchild of Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali,the 36-year-old cleric and mastermind of Al-Qaeda's Asian operations.

Regional intelligence sources claim Hambali was disappointed as he had already selectedand trained his team for the carefully planned attack.

One operative was named this week as an Indonesian Muslim, Kushmir Nesirwan who movedto Australia in 1975.

Mr Nesirwan was among those targeted by Australian intelligence officials in raidsin late October.

That he had invited JI's spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir into his home for lunchand had attended several of his lectures at Sydney mosques during his many visits downunder in the 1990s left him exposed.

It didn't help either that there was "bad blood" between him and Perth man Jack Roche,facing conspiracy charges for allegedly planning to bomb the Israeli embassy in Canberraand consulate in Sydney.

It's not known what the bad blood stems from but Mr Nesirwan's lawyer, for one, believesRoche may have handed his client's name to ASIO.

Mr Nesirwan laughed at the allegations as detailed in Singapore's The Straits Times newspaper.

Yes he was Indonesian, yes he had visited Ambon as claimed by the report (but thatwas to attend his father's funeral) and yes he was a taxi driver during the Olympics.

But the Greenacre father of six children aged eight to 22 denies he was ever involvedin a terrorist network. He says he never sent money to JI, was never approached by JIoperatives and claims not to be a Bashir supporter despite inviting him to lunch.

The Olympic Games became an attractive target for terrorists seeking global coveragefor their cause after the 1972 Munich Games were marred by the slaying of 11 Israeli athletesby Palestinian terrorists.

As early as 1995, ASIO warned of credible terrorist threats including on airlinersin the lead-up to the Sydney Games and in Atlanta in 1996, a pipe bomb exploded killingone and injuring 11.

Experts warned that Australia's geographical location was no measure of protectionfor Sydney's 2000 Games, the nation as much a target as America and its allies.

Bruce Hoffman of St Andrews University in Scotland, warned seven years ago, terroristswould seek to use the Sydney Games for publicity if nothing else.

There was a scare when authorities in New Zealand in the months before the Games uncoveredan attempt by Osama bin Laden sympathisers to bomb Australia's only nuclear reactor atLucas Heights.

So it seems Sydney got lucky.

The Games went off without a hitch. Organisers got a big pat on the back and taxpayerswere left millions out of pocket.

The former head of intelligence for the Games, Neil Fergus, confirmed this week therewas a "very credible and real threat from al-Qaeda and its surrogates going into the Olympics".

"There was some specificity about it but I can't go into it because it is classified," he said.

For the federal government's part, they say investigations into terrorist cells inAustralia are ongoing.

But there was nothing in the way of a specific warning of an attack on the Sydney Games.

"The simple fact is that we don't have any information ourselves that at least I'maware of that there were plans for such an attack on the Olympic Games," Foreign MinisterAlexander Downer said.

For Paul McKinnon, the former head of Sydney Games security, the alleged plot is morefantasy than fact.

He says details of the plot are too late and too sensational to be true.

It should be seen as part of the political game Prime Minister John Howard had begunplaying with his pre-emptive strike comments, he said.

But the Olympics aren't in the clear yet.

The next Games in Athens are only about 18 months away and a terrorist attack at theancient home of the Olympics can't be ruled out with Greece's proximity to the MiddleEast and the troubled Balkan region.

One thing in Athens' favour, perhaps, is that the man who took overall responsibilityfor the Sydney Games, then NSW Police Commissioner Peter Ryan, is now charged with overseeingsecurity at the 2004 Games.

AAP sal/mo

KEYWORD: TERROR OLY AUST (BACKGROUNDER)