With less than a month to go, co-host for the upcoming T20 World Cup, West Indies receives a terror threat. As per reports from Cricbuzz, the threats are given by a North Pakistan terror group, pro-Islamic State(IS).
CEO of Cricket West Indies(CWI) Jonny Graves in a joint statement with ICC, said they are working on safety measures and prevention from any sort of turbulence that might arise during the event and coordinating with all the other participating nations.
He added, “We work closely with authorities in the host countries and cities, and continually monitor and evaluate the global landscape to ensure appropriate plans are in place to mitigate any risks identified to our event,”
As per Daily Express, the news was broken out by “Nashir Pakistan” which is said to be an Islamic State group-affiliated propaganda channel. The threats have been associated with IS Khorasan where they stated, “Pro-Islamic State (IS) media sources have launched campaigns inciting violence against sporting events, which included video messages from the Afghanistan-Pakistan branch, IS Khorasan (IS-K) which highlighted assaults in numerous countries and urged supporters to join the battlefield in their countries,”
Following the circulation of terror threats, Trinidad & Tobago Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley shared about the work that is being done by security agencies to anticipate any possible terrorist attacks. As per reports, Barbados regional security officials are currently monitoring this situation.
Rowley shared his stance on the Sunday Express, “Given the fact that bad actors can choose to misbehave in any way possible it makes it virtually impossible to completely seal off all opportunities.”
He further added, “However, in order to ameliorate these dangers, we at the local and regional levels have remained alert to many threats and singularly or together have our intelligence and other security agencies working to protect the population in countries and at venues throughout the tournament.”
The biennial tournament which is going to take place from June 1 to June 29 will be hosted in the United States and multiple Caribbean countries namely, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago. However, there have been no terror threats issued to the US venues.