Breaking News: 7 men arrested in UK for possessing deadly RICIN

CNN Live news (Heard it on Audio) | 1/7/03 | Rick Donaldson

[Rick.Donaldson]

Breaking News.. Live on CNN just now.

Seven individuals have been arrested in London who had some quantity of highly dangerous poison. The second commentator stated the poison is "ricin".

Ricin is a poison that is extracted from castor beans and is extremely deadly. A pin-head amount can kill a full grown human.

Rick Donaldson

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Rick Donaldson
Anomalies Network Admin
Colorado Springs
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http://survival.anomalies.net
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Illegitimus non carborundum.
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"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[ken5050]

FYI..you up?

[Dan Day]

Here's a layman's version of the technical stuff: Ricin is a protein complex found in some plants which inhibits protein synthesis. Since the cells in your body do most of their ordinary functions via protein synthesis, the introduction of a substance which inhibits protein synthesis causes the "machinery" in the affected cell to shut down, which causes the cell to die within a few hours.

One molecule of ricin is enough to kill a cell, which is why it's so potent a poison.

If you get enough ricin (and it doesn't take much), so many cells in your body die that you croak within 24-72 hours due to your organs failing because they can't go on functioning when a goodly proportion of their cells are dead (impairing function) and rotting (adding toxic overload to the strain).

In this respect, the mechanism of death is similar to fatal doses of radiation or virulent viral infections, both of which kill by mass "cell assassination".

[Rebelbase]

"The men are of north African origin"

Let the profiling begin.

[Mr. Mojo]

arrested in UK

Let me guess. These six dudes don't have names like Nigel, Cyril, Dee, Colin, etc.

[Dog Gone]

BBC:

Anti-terrorist police have arrested seven people after discovering traces of the highly toxic poison, ricin, in London.

In the early hours of 5 January, six men of north African origin and one woman were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 at premises in North and East London by officers from the Metropolitan Police Anti -Terrorist Branch.

Our message is still 'alert not alarm'

Dr Pat Troop, Deputy Chief Medical Officer

The six men, aged in their late teens, 20s and 30s, remain in custody and are being interviewed by Anti-Terrorist Branch officers.

The woman has since been released.

The arrests follow a joint operation between the Anti-Terrorist Branch, MPS Special Branch and the Security Service, and followed intelligence passed to officers.

A quantity of material and items of equipment were found at a residential address in Wood Green, north London, where one of the men was arrested.

Police say forensic analysis of the Wood Green address is currently being carried out.

Toxic material

Ricin, which comes from the castor bean, is considered a likely biowarfare or bioterrorist agent and is on the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention's "B" list of agents - considered a moderate threat.

It is relatively easy to manufacture in small amounts but would be considered an unusual agent to use for a mass attack as it must be ingested or injected to take effect.

It could have been produced by amateurs in very small quantities

Sir Timothy Garden, former assistant chief of defence staff

Large quantities were reportedly found in caves in Afghanistan.

It was also the toxin thought to have been used to murder dissident Bulgarian Georgi Markov, who was stabbed on Waterloo Bridge in London with a poisoned umbrella in 1978.

Referring to the threat still posed by international terrorism, Prime Minister Tony Blair told an audience of diplomats in London: "The arrests that were made earlier today [Tuesday] show this danger is present and real and with us now and its potential is huge."

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Pat Troop said: "We have previously said London, and indeed the rest of the UK, continues to face a range of terrorist threats from a number of different groups.

"And while our message is still 'alert not alarm', we would re-iterate our earlier appeals for the public to remain vigilant and aware and report anything suspicious to police."

Sir Timothy Garden, former assistant chief of defence staff assessed the likely threat.

"It depends very much on the quantities one's talking about," he told BBC News 24.

"It could have been produced by amateurs in very small quantities.

"If it's a significant quantity then it's a worry because this is a poisonous agent which would require a lot of work to produce in a major quantity for use by terrorists."

Tests continuing

The material has been analysed at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratories at Porton Down in Wiltshire.

A small amount of the material recovered from the Wood Green address tested positive for the presence of ricin.

Mr Troop said: "Our primary concern is the safety of the public and the police have worked closely with the Department of Health throughout.

"Tests were carried out on the material and it was confirmed this [Tuesday] morning that toxic material was present.

"The department is now alerting the health service, including primary care, about these developments.

"It is also ensuring that the Health Service is able to provide advice to the public, including through NHS Direct."

[Dan Day]

Not very promising as a wide-scale terrorism tool based on the factors mentioned in the synopsis, but very handy if you're contemplating assassination.

That depends on what you mean by "wide-scale". I agree that it would be impractical to kill 10,000 people this way, but you could do a bang-up job of killing just about everyone in an enclosed space like an airliner or a moderately sized building (via aerosol), or everyone who was fed from a given food source (via powder in the food).

Because symptoms don't start showing for several hours after ingestion, no one would notice anything was amiss until everyone had finished eating, even if the eating is done in shifts as at a mess hall. Think of all the corporate and government buildings which feed most of their occupants in a given day via a large cafeteria.

[Dan Day]

It is relatively easy to manufacture in small amounts but would be considered an unusual agent to use for a mass attack as it must be ingested or injected to take effect.

"Ingestion" in this case includes breathing it in.

[John H K]

"The men are of north African origin."
Gee...how PC.

How, exactly, is this "PC?"

North Africa isn't the Middle East, btw.

Also, the population of North Africa is an admixture of Arabs and Berbers.

[cajungirl]

Am I the only one to note that they found a "small amount" where they got arrested,,,where is the rest of it???

[John H K]

Ricin has bothered me for a long time. Since it's so simple to make, I'm very surprised it hasn't been used/found more often.

1. You have to get it physically inside someone's body

2. Despite the fervent hopes of much of FR, there really are very few people as a % of population inclined to terrorism, even among Arabs and Muslims.

[Dog Gone]

Q&A: What is ricin? Traces of the highly toxic poison ricin have been found in a north London house. BBC News Online looks at what ricin is. What is ricin? Ricin is a toxic material which can be fatal when inhaled, ingested or - most dangerously - injected. It is easily produced, and can be extracted from the beans of the castor oil plant. It can damage the organs, and a combination of pulmonary, liver, renal and immunological failure can lead to death, although people can recover from exposure. How potent is it? Just one milligram of ricin is enough to kill. However, terrorism expert Professor Paul Wilkinson told the BBC that it was not possible to cause huge numbers of casualties by simply spraying the substance into the air. Is there any treatment? There is currently no antidote to the poison, though scientists are working on a vaccine. If someone is affected, doctors can only treat their symptoms. How would someone know they were affected? The first symptoms depend on how the person has been exposed to ricin but can include fever, stomach upsets and coughing. If someone breaths the poison in, they could suffer serious lung damage. If ricin gets into the digestive system, it can lead to irritation of the gut, gastroenteritis, bloody diarrhoea and vomiting. It can also affect the central nervous system, and cause seizures. These effects may not become evident until some hours after the person has been exposed to the poison. Has it been used before? Traces of ricin have been found in caves in Afghanistan. The poison was also used to kill Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov by using a specially-equipped umbrella to inject a pellet coated with 450 micrograms of ricin into his leg in an infamous attack on London's Waterloo Bridge in 1978. Does ricin have any positive benefits? Ricin is being studied to see if it could form the basis of cancer treatments because it can kill cells easily.

See also: 07 Jan 03 | UK Lethal poison found at London home 12 Sep 02 | Health Vaccine hope for lethal toxin Internet links: Ricin information The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Health stories now: Being drunk 'a trick of the mind' Fat at 40 'slashes life expectancy' Fraudulant NHS technician sentenced Surgeon denies botching operation Lead link to youth crime Pregnancy ailment study begins HRT cuts diabetes rates Fish cuts smokers' heart risk Links to more Health stories are at the foot of the page.

[John H K]

Am I the only one to note that they found a "small amount" where they got arrested,,,where is the rest of it???

False positive (as was the case with the Microsoft "Anthrax Attack") is always a possibility.

[Angelus Errare]

For those keeping score, this is the fourth attempted chemical weapons attack in Europe ever since the last bin Laden tape (real or not) surfaced. As with Ayman al-Zawahiri's call to arms that was the likely catalyst for Bali, it seems that a number of European sleeper cells have come out of the woodwork of late, all of them armed with some kind of crude chemical weapons, usually cyanide or ricin.

The plots have been:

- cyanide attack on the London subway
- cyanide attack in Paris (target unknown)
- an "unknown" substance that was intended for use against the Russian Embassy in France

The last of these was rather sophisticated, with the cell's members even going to the trouble of procuring one of those nifty Hazmat suits for the purposes of the attack. Nearly all of these cells have been part of the GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), an Algerian organization under the command of Hassan Hattab, a member of al-Qaeda's military committee responsible for coordinating operations against the government of Algeria, a key US ally in North Africa. The 56 Algerian soldiers killed over the weekend are some example of Hattab's brutal handiwork. The GSPC, which has about 5,000 fighters, has an extensive sleeper network for both terrorism and fundraising in Europe and has recently overseen the duties of recruiting young European Muslims and sending them to al-Qaeda training facilities in the Balkans.

The ricin in question was likely produced in northern Iraq, where Abu Khabab, the head of Project Zabadi (al-Qaeda's chemical weapons program) is currently living rather comfortably with the support of Ansar al-Islam, another al-Qaeda subsidiary. The Kurdish sources in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Kurdish Democratic Party have both said that Iraq has assisted al-Qaeda in chemical weapons development and I see no particular reason to dispute that claim. From northern Iraq, the usual route for al-Qaeda is to travel north through Iran and then north into Azerbaijan, where al-Qaeda has a rather large following due to their support of the Azeris in their war with Armenia.

From Azerbaijan, they can either head even further north to the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, which is pretty much the headquarters of the Chechen rebellion, or west to Kosovo and northern Albania. And once in either region, it's just a quick hop across the borders to central and western Europe. Because of the EU, borders mean very little in Europe anymore, much to the ire of many law enforcement agencies.

The longer the terrorist facilities in Georgia, the Balkans, and northern Iraq remain operational, the more likely a chemical weapons attack becomes. The question just remains whether or not our government is going to recognize that and act accordingly.

[Destro]

Did you mention Rome's foiled cyanide attack on the US embassy?

[shhrubbery!]

007 dressed as Mary Poppins? I never heard of this one...

Don't be silly, it was the guy in the bowler, not Mary Poppins.

[VMI70]

You have FReepmail

[denydenydeny]

North Africa isn't the Middle East, btw. Also, the population of North Africa is an admixture of Arabs and Berbers.

Now you're being ridiculous. I guarantee that the suspects are ethnic Arab Muslims from the Maghreb.

[cake_crumb]

"north african origin...is that algeria"

Could be. There are several North African countries. I know Egypt is also in North Africa. And Somalia.

[Angelus Errare]

No, because that was a plot that had been in production pre-9/11. These attacks have all been launched post-9/11 and were likely planned by Abu Zubaydah's successor, Abu Musab Zarqawi. In other words, after al-Qaeda was driven from Afghanistan.

This is a key point because one of the facts that a lot of US officials don't like talking about is that the terrorist organization already established havens outside of Afghanistan as a type of redundancy should their stronghold ever be overrun. The Pankisi Gorge in Georgia is one of them, as is northern Albania, Kosovo, and sections of Bosnia.

Another point is that we know that as of August 2002 al-Qaeda had at least one ricin production facility up and running in northern Iraq. This means that so long as that facility and others like it remain, they can continue churning out chemical weapons and dispatch new recruits to do their bidding. Sure, most of the plots will be disrupted, but if even one gets through it'd be a disaster.

[smiley]

Guess we can expect more of these news "alerts" as we get closer to eradicating Saddam.