November 06 Wednesday 2002
SA police worry about attacks at Cricket World Cup

CAPE TOWN: Police planning security for next year's Cricket World Cup in South Africa are increasingly concerned about domestic terrorism after last week's Soweto bombings, a senior policeman said on Tuesday. "Ultimately, we have to come up with the ideal plan for the Cricket World Cup, taking into consideration the threat of terrorism, not only international terrorism, but suddenly domestic terrorism...as well," police director Ben van Deventer said after a briefing to legislators.

Van Deventer is head of security for the 54-match event next February and March. Organisers have sold most of the 860,000 tickets for the event and expect about 25,000 fans to arrive from abroad.

He said the 10 bomb blasts around Johannesburg last week, which police and the government have blamed on a tiny group of white rightwing extremists, had increased security worries. One woman was killed in the bombings, which targeted a mosque, a temple and railway lines. "We're going for uncompromising security," Van Deventer told. 

Van Deventer, who handled the successful security operation for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August, said he was confident police could make all 12 venues around the country secure.

Nearly 200 people, mostly foreign tourists, died in three bomb blasts on the holiday island of Bali on October 12. Police said after the world summit they had foiled a plan by the ultra-rightist Boeremag group to smuggle bombs hidden in cooking gas canisters into the summit venue.

The same Boeremag has been named in the recent arrest of 20 rightwing suspects alleged to have been plotting to overthrow the eight-year-old black-led democratic government.