Egyptian Sailor Dies in Brazil From Anthrax- Brazil Police

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.

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.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, five people died in still-unsolved anthrax mailings.

Don't forget Bob Stevens managed to drive from N. Carolina to Florida. He got home, went to bed, and in the early hours of the morning his wife had to take him to hospital. He was almost in a coma. He died 3 days latert, but his life was probably prolonged by IC etc.

From a CBS story about Stevens' widow:

On a trip to North Carolina, Mrs. Stevens says her husband became flushed and feverish. His condition worsened on the drive back to Florida.

"He just couldn't get warm," she recalls. "He was wearing a jacket, but he was just shivering."

Two days later, Steven was in the hospital fighting for his life.

One of the postal workers was (unfortunately) sent home by his doctor, but both had been sick enough to stay home (fatigue, fever, etc.) for five days before they died on their first day of hospitalization. In sum, none of these three would have seemed well enough to work, or fit for an ocean voyage, for at least five days before their death, let alone 24 hours before.

BRASILIA, Brazil - A Brazilian police officer says there is no substance to reports that an Eygptian sailor believed killed by anthrax was in possession of a suitcase filled with the deady bacteria.

What exactly "is" a suitcase full of anthrax? That's easy to deny. And note he said he didn't "find anything alarming." A lawyer could run into the ground the loopholes and assumptions and deflections in that statement.

What if it were a "package", perhaps in a suitcase? Here is today's story in "O Liberal" from Belem

PF confirma contaminação por antraz

PF confirms contamination for anthrax

The Federal Policy affirmed yesterday that it is practically certain that the member of the crew of an Egyptian freighter who died in Pará, in day 11 of April, was victim of the anthrax. In interview to the agency of Reuters notice, the agent of the PF Fernando Sergio I castrate said that the possibility of the Egyptian Ibrahim Saed Ibrahim to have died because of the substance is of 90%. Ibrahim died in Port Trumpets, city of Oriximiná, in the West of Pará. As the finding of the autopsy made for the Legal Medical Institute of Belém, it after faleceu to vomit, to suffer to internal hemorrhage and multiple bankruptcy from the agencies.

Ibrahim Saed Ibrahim left the Cairo, capital of Egypt, airplane.

He made scale in São Paulo and he followed for Macapá, in the Amapá, where he embarked in a cargo ship for Port Trumpets, where if he locates the Mining River of the North, subsidiary of the Company Valley of the River Candy. In accordance with the Federal Policy, Ibrahim Saed Ibrahim carried an addressed package to Canada, that could be contaminated with the anthrax. When handling this package, the Egyptian can have been contaminated.

The superintendent of the Federal Policy in Pará, Geraldo Araújo, said that the authorities of Canada had been alerted by Brazil on the possibility of attempts, on the part of terrorists, to send for that country, through Brazil, lethal substances as the anthrax.

Mineradora - the Mining River of Norte (MRN) yesterday divulged note on the death of the Egyptian engineer Ibrahim Sayed Soliman Ibraim, in Port Trumpets, the city of Oriximiná, where the company keeps project of bauxite exploration. The engineer would have lost contaminated for the bacterium anthrax, that was world-wide famous for the presumption use in terrorist attacks, through contaminated correspondences.

The MRN guaranteed that all the foreign ships, that Trumpets anchor in Port possess Free the Practical one (folloied certificate of inspection report), granted for the National Agency of Sanitary Monitoring (Anvisa). The company remembers that a ship alone can operate all in the Domestic territory by means of this release. For this, the Sanitary Monitoring carries through inspection in the boats in the first port of entrance in Brazil.

In the case of the ships with destination the Port Trumpets, that is made in the Anchorage of Fazendinha (Amapá). The company still waits the official finding of Instituto Médico Legal (IML) of Belém on the cause of the member of the crew death Ibrahim, occured in Port Trumpets, day 11 of April. According to preliminary report of the IML, the death can have been provoked for the bacterium anthrax.

The Egyptian one was mate Wadi Alarab. Originating the Cairo, the member of the crew disembarked in Brazil, in São Paulo, where she caught a connection for Macapá, in Amapá. He was in the Anchorage of Fazendinha that it embarked in the ship with destination the Port Trumpets. The MRN standed out that the embarkment of the Egyptian was carried through at the moment of the inspection of the Anvisa. The ship arrived the Port Trumpets in day 10 of April, being that the official visit of the local port authorities (Federal Prescription, Federal Policy and Docenave) was carried through in day 11 of April.

In that one exactly day, the immediate one was found died in its cabin and had the body directed for Belém. The principle, the autopsy identified to a followed spill of collapse and death for asphyxia, that demanded a toxicológico examination to inquire the existence of some another cause.

Already a preliminary report, divulged in day 16 of April, suggested the possibilities of the death to have occurred due to an infection for Bacillus anthrax B. the body of Ibrahim Sayed Soliman Ibraim still meets in the Legal Medical Institute of Belém.

The MRN also informed that one has equipped of the Anvisa is in Port Trumpets since the last friday, 25 and comes esclarecerecendo doubts of local, representative port authorities of the Docenave and the Mining River of the North regarding the procedures adopted for the agency in the Anchorage of Fazendinha. Moreover, a new routine of inspection of foreign ships, the order of the Federal Policy was argued, in case that some appears case suspected in the passage between Fazendinha and Porto Trumpets. http://www.oliberal.com.br/policia/default5.asp#n1

Well, I don't discount that the anthrax is still a threat. If we take the situation at face value -- Saddam, Uday, Qusay are all alive, at large, know where the biologicals are cached, have no fixed assets to play for, and every reason to want to revenge themselves on the United States -- then we are in deep doo-doo. Which is one of many reasons I don't take the story that we are clueless as to the whereabouts of Hussein at face value. My other reasons include that it is a priori logical for us to use the Russians to defuse the situation, and a priori logical for us to pretend we didn't know anything about it, that it is by now quite clear that the US has been lying to us about the so-called decapitation strikes, and more and more hints are surfacing that a Russian-brokered surrender is, in fact, exactly what happened. But, it is still "just a theory."

As to this "anthrax" case, I grow more convinced with each passing hour that it's a red herring. There are six billion people on this planet. Several million of them died of various causes during the Iraq campaign. How surprising is that someone, somewhere, went off half-cocked and misconstrued one of those millions of deaths as being connected with bioterrorism when it wasn't?

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