Posted on 04/28/2003 10:28:14 AM PDT by Shermy
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - A crew member of an Egyptian merchant ship has died in northern Brazil, almost certainly from anthrax, after opening a suitcase suspected of containing the substance which he was taking to Canada.
A spokesman for Brazilian federal police in the Amazon state of Para said on Monday an autopsy of the Egyptian man, whom he named as Ibrahim Saved Soliman Ibrahim, showed that he had died after vomiting, internal bleeding and multiple organ failure.
"He was the victim of anthrax," said Castro, adding that police were 90 percent certain that Ibrahim had died of anthrax.
Ibrahim died in the hotel were he was staying on April 11. Several health workers who found his body were taken to a hospital after becoming ill but are now out of danger.
Ibrahim had traveled to Brazil from Cairo to join his ship, the Wabi Alaras, which loaded bauxite in the Amazon to take to Canada.
"We imagine that this is about bioterrorism and Brazil was just used as a point of transfer," said Castro.
Ibrahim died before his ship sailed to Canada, where it was quarantined by authorities last week.
Canada was alerted about the ship through Interpol.
Castro said Ibrahim had been given the suitcase in Cairo by an unidentified person and was due to deliver it to somebody in Canada. But he doubted Ibrahim knew what the content of the bag was otherwise he most likely would not have opened it.
"He opened it because he was curious," Castro said.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, five people died in still-unsolved anthrax mailings.
I will and I shall, thanks. I agree with your assessment of him, btw.
This is likely just a foreign reporter's mistake, in my view. I think I've read all the accounts in the Brazilian press, and I don't recall any of them giving this story (or even, I think, mentioning a hotel room); in fact, weren't some of the Portuguese accounts quite specific that he died on board the ship?
I tend to believe the local press regarding details like this. The local reporters are closer to the sources, they speak the language, and they aren't as likely to be involved in geopolitical spin.
I suspect that it may be the partial truth. The best spin isn't spun out of whole cloth; it has elements of truth in it. Those elements of truth provide plausibility, and, if the full truth is ever revealed, the spinners didn't actually lie -- they just missed seeing one of the angles.
The implication of the story we've heard is that Ibrahim didn't know that he was transporting anthrax. What did he think he was transporting? Drugs perhaps? He knew he was smuggling something, after all; I think he would assume it was either drugs or cash. This would also explain why he opened the bag; perhaps he actually tried some of the contents on purpose, thinking they were drugs. One could see from this why he would have succumbed so quickly and so overwhelmingly; he would have had massive exposure.
An experienced drug smuggler is also likely to be the kind of person who would know how to transport something like this successfully. He has contacts, he knows who to pay off, he's familiar with where security is lacking, etc.
I'm also reminded of some stories I vaguely remember from a few years ago about some batches of heroin, I think, that had bacterial contamination of some sort. The cases were in Europe -- I think Sweden and Scotland, but maybe I have the details wrong. Probably unrelated, but I just thought I'd throw it out.
That could result in a swift demise.
I don't think it could be as simply done as that suggests. Lula is Brazil's president now; no one thinks that Brazil is a client state of the U.S. at this time. Sending an American down there explicitly to orchestrate things would backfire, don't you think?
Now maybe we're working out a deal in conjunction with the Brazilian government; that's different, and certainly possible. Lula's been in the economic news recently for being much more moderate than people expected, at least so far, and I gather the Brazilian economy is doing reasonably well, with the real actually rising against the dollar. I wonder what the true state of relations between the U.S. and Brazil is right now.
Nice image, anyway.
Yes. Every article I've read prior to today's Reuters story has indicated he died on the ship.
A NY Times "journalist" and an overzealous Dr. Rosenberg were the ones who focused all their attention on the guy. If they had mentioned any other names, the press would have been out there showing the other people of interest getting the workover/vetting, too. But with one named guy and 29 others or so, the press was naturally only going to report on the one it had leads on.
As for how much anthrax is out there that didn't get opened by a curious Egyptian cat, well.... Iraq had quite a bit and they had to put it somewhere we haven't yet looked...
ROFL!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.