Free Republic

The widely available drug fentanyl, already the number one killer of Americans under 50, could be weaponized and used for terroristic mass poisoning, according to health experts at Rutgers and other institutions. “Before fentanyl, the only viable mass poisons were rare and difficult-to-access agents such as cyanide or nerve agents,” said Lewis Nelson, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and senior author of the new Frontiers in Public Health paper. “Fentanyl can be just as deadly if properly disseminated, and it’s ubiquitous. A motivated person could readily obtain enough to potentially poison hundreds...

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho -- A University of Idaho graduate student who is under investigation for suspected terrorism ties obtained unauthorized access to a campus lab containing radioactive material, court documents allege. Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a Saudi national working on his computer science doctoral degree, quietly moved his student office from the Computer Science Department into the school's engineering isotope lab, apparently without his adviser's knowledge, according to the documents. "The investigation of Sami Al-Hussayen has, from its outset, been focused on suspected material support to terrorism, particularly to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network," FBI agent Michael Gnecknow said in the...

Irina Vasina is checking the 'durability' of the victims of the terrorist attack at Dubrovka, and will postpone judicial sessions   On April 25th, 2005, in Hall 203 of the Zamoskvoreche district court, Moscow (Judge Irina Vasina presiding), hearings continued on the complaint of 'Nord-Ost' survivor Svetlana Gubareva, whose 13 -year-old daughter and US husband Sandy Booker perished at Dubrovka. Prehistory The essence of Svetlana's complaint is that she is charging the Moscow city attorney's investigative group with inaction on the 'Nord-Ost' case. Up until now, the precise time and place of her loved ones' deaths has not been established....

A sensation in the 'Nord-Ost' case: the victims of the tragedy could for the first time read the attorney general's resolution refusing to bring a criminal complaint Judge Susina's achievement. The intriguing part of the sensation, and not there would be no sensation at all, if the machines of government had simply carried out the law. The 'Nord-Ost' victims had no access to the case materials for more than two years. The ice began to crack only on November 11th, 2004, and only as if by accident. Judge Natalya Susina of the capital's Zamoskvoreche law court, during the course of...

The Terror of 9/99: Fact Sheet The Bombings September 1999 was the month of terror in Russia. Several bombs went off within days of each other, killing nearly 300 and injuring more than 550. On August 31st, 1999, a bomb exploded during rush hour at the Manezh shopping mall in the center of Moscow. Forty people were injured, one person died. On September 4th, a truck exploded in the military housing complex in the city of Buinaksk. Sixty-four people died under the ruins of a five-story building, 23 of them children. 133 were injured. On the night of September 9th,...