Terror group al-Qaeda was regarded the major threat to the Sydney Olympics and there was evidence its followers trained in Australia, former Olympics intelligence chief Neil Fergus said today. Mr Fergus said this wasn’t just scaremongering as much intelligence analysis had been done by the Olympic Intelligence Centre, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and other agencies. “Al-Qaeda, and its surrogate groups, was the greatest concern for the security operation for the Olympics,” he said on ABC radio. That follows comments yesterday from Prime Minister John Howard who said intelligence had revealed al-Qaeda considered attacks in Australia even before the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Mr Fergus said there was media reporting of a training camp located at Braidwood near Canberra before the Olympics. “That camp certainly had all the hallmarks of a terrorist training camp and certainly there were indicators that people believed to have been involved in that camp had more than just an empathy with al-Qaeda’s objectives but had some affiliations with al-Qaeda,” he said. Full Story
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