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Sloan reports that British police have found a suspicious deadly toxin.  (Audio) |
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Posted on 01/07/2003 1:42:13 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Police Seize Deadly Poison in London
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LONDON (AP) -- Police said Tuesday they found traces of ricin - a deadly poison twice as potent as cobra venom - in a north London apartment and arrested six men of North African origin in connection with the virulent toxin that has been linked to al-Qaida terrorists and Iraq.
London police said material seized at a flat in the Wood Green neighborhood on Sunday had tested positive Tuesday for traces of the toxin, tiny amounts of which can kill an adult. There is no antidote.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking to a meeting of British ambassadors, said the find highlights the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.
"As the arrests...show, this danger is present and real, and with us now, and its potential is huge," he said.
Ricin (pronounced RICE-in) is derived from the castor bean plant, which is grown around the world. The poison is relatively easy to produce, and Andy Oppenheimer, a chemical and biological weapons expert at Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor, said its presence in London did not necessarily indicate a connection to any outside group or country.
Anti-terrorist police said they arrested the six men of north African origin under the Terrorism Act during raids in east and north London and seized "a quantity of material and items of equipment" at the Wood Green apartment.
Police did not identify the men and refused to specify what country or countries they were from, saying only that they were in their late teens, 20s and 30s. They were not immediately charged with a crime.
A woman arrested in the raids was released, authorities said.
Police said the arrests were prompted by "receipt of intelligence" but gave no other details.
"We have previously said that London - and indeed the rest of the U.K. - continues to face a range of terrorist threats from a number of different groups," police anti-terrorist branch chief David Veness and Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Pat Troop said in a statement.
Blair's spokesman said he knew of no specific intelligence about how the suspects may have planned to use the ricin.
The Department of Health said doctors around Britain had been informed of the find and warned to look for symptoms of ricin exposure, including fever, stomach pains, diarrhea and vomiting.
Ricin causes diarrhea so severe that victims can die of shock from massive fluid and electrolyte loss.
Oppenheimer, the weapons expert, said injecting ricin was an effective way of targeting individuals as was the case of Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov, killed in London in 1978. Police said ricin was in a pinhead-sized pellet injected into Markov's thigh, but couldn't confirm the widely reported theory that he was jabbed by a rigged umbrella.
Oppenheimer said terrorists could kill large numbers of people with ricin if they put it into aerosol, a job he described as tricky but not impossible. A crowded, enclosed environment like the London subway would probably be the most appealing target, he added.
"It's just one of these horror scenarios which people are very frightened of at the moment," he said. "You only need milligrams to kill somebody."
For decades, Londoners lived with Irish Republican Army bomb attacks, but the specter of biological terrorism is frighteningly new.
In November, the government issued - and then hurriedly withdrew - a statement warning that al-Qaida might be prepared to use a radiological device or poison gas in Britain. The warning was replaced with a more general alert of terrorist threats.
On a tape released in November, a speaker believed to be al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden castigated U.S. allies that have joined the war against terrorism, specifically mentioning Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia.
U.S. officials said in August that the Islamic extremist group Ansar al-Islam had tested ricin along with other chemical and biological agents in northern Iraq, territory controlled by Kurds, not Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Ansar is allegedly linked to al-Qaida.
United Nations weapons inspectors who left Iraq in 1998 listed ricin among the poisons they believed Saddam produced. U.S. troops also found traces of the substance at suspected al-Qaida biological weapons sites in Afghanistan.
Amateur American scientists with no links to terror groups have also produced the poison at home.
In Janesville, Wis., Thomas Leahy pleaded guilty to possessing ricin in 1998. The FBI arrested Kenneth Olsen in Spokane, Wash., last summer for allegedly manufacturing it, a charge he denies.
But, of course. Folks accidentally possess biological weapons all the time, without being connected to terrorist groups! And what about the injustice of the authorities searching North Africans before first having searched all whites in the UK!
General view of a North London apartment above a pharmacy where police found traces of a deadly toxin, January 7, 2003
Wonder if our govt. has checked out pharmacy-related personnel in the Princeton area in the anthrax search. Kinda doubt it.
Good point! And I kinda doubt it, too.
But, why bother? They've already got Hatfill under close surveillance...
Only if those pharmacists are angry, White, right-wing males...
Ricin doesn't emulate a heart attack. You die from a lack of fluids as your body flushes out your system in every way feasable. Nice try, though. You get the tin foil of the day award!
This is a popular urban legend and factually incorrect.
Ricin is a cytotoxin that inhibits protein synthesis in mammalian cells by (permanently) inactivating the ribosomes, shutting them down. It causes wholesale cell death and tissue/organ failure as a result. The direct cause of death can vary widely and depends on where the ricin is in the body and the method by which you came in contact with it. Because of the very fine-grained nature of its toxic effect, it usually takes anywhere from hours to days before symptoms of poisoning are noticeable, usually requiring a critical mass of cells in a region of your body to die before you notice since cell death is a normally occurring phenomenon in the body. Of course, if you notice any symptoms at all, you are usually toast. This has made it a popular assassins weapon, since a lethal poisoning may take a day or more to manifest symptoms.
Among the reasons ricin is interesting is that it is not very specific to any particular kind of cell and will happily deactivate eukaryotic ribosomes most places it finds them. Most cytotoxins show a great deal more specificity.
This is a link to a PDF document:
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