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March 20, 2007

Islamists And Bio-Chemical Terror: Part Two

This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared earlier in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.

In 2001 a plot to attack the European Parliament building in Strasbourg with sarin gas was foiled. Six Islamists appeared at Horseferry Road Magistrates on February 17, 2001, but charges against them were dropped. One of these was Algerian Mustapha Labsi, who was detained in connection with a 1997 plot to bomb the G7 summit in Lille, northern France. Labsi was an associate of Abu Doha, who is said to have been a leading Al Qaeda co-ordinator in Europe. Doha (aka Rachid Boukhalfa and other aliases) is wanted in the US for allegedly masterminding a plot to blow up Los Angeles airport on Millennium Eve, 1999.

Algerian Ahmed Ressam (left) was arrested in December 1999 in connection with this planned attack. He had more than 100 pounds of explosives hidden in his car. In July 2001 he told a court how he had been trained in Afghanistan camps to prepare and use hydrogen cyanide gas. He had been advised to release it near buildings' air vents, and said he had taken part in exercises in which dogs were poisoned with the gas. He received a 22-year jail sentence.

The European Parliament plot was not the only Islamist attempt to use deadly chemicals in a European attack. MI5 had urged prosecutors to drop the case against the men who plotted the EU attack, but a police leak, one day after the case was dropped, revealed to the Telegraph that sarin plans had been found in a house in London. The plans detailed how to manufacture sarin and described how to deploy it. Special Branch officers believed an attack upon London's underground railway system was being planned.

The "Hamburg ring", with which these individuals were connected, had planned poison gas attacks against the Paris Metro, probably using sarin, states a 2005 report from the Jamestown Foundation.

Italy too has had evidence of Al Qaeda-related plans for chemical attacks. In March 2001 a phone conversation between two suspected Al Qaeda operatives was recorded by Italian authorities. Essid Sami Ben Khemais spoke of an "efficient" product which could be stored in tomato cans that, when released, could "suffocate" victims. He also mentioned a gas bomb whose effectiveness had been developed by a Libyan professor. Khemais had links to the "Hamburg ring".

In February 2002, four Moroccans were arrested outside Rome. They had with them maps of Rome and its water systems, and the US Embassy was circled in red ink. With them was found nine pounds of potassium ferrocyanide. This cyanide-based substance is not lethal in water, but can be ignited with gunpowder and dispersed by air.

Abdel Qader Fadlallah Mamour, the Senegalese-born former imam of Carmagnola mosque, was deported from Italy in November 2003. An Islamist who boasted of knowing bin Laden, he claimed in July 2005 that "within six months Italy will undergo a chemical attack."

On December 16, 2002 100 French police raided the Cité des 4000 housing estate in the suburbs of Paris. 29-year old French-Algerian Marwan Ben-Ahmed (Merouane Benhamed) was arrested with a stash of chemicals to manufacture explosives, and two empty propane canisters. Other chemicals, detonators and a chemical protection suit were also found in the apartment. The French authorities believed that Ben-Ahmed had intended to fill the propane canisters with toxic chemicals. Material on a computer revealed the names of some of Ben-Ahmed's associates.

One of these associates was Rabah Kadri, who had been arrested on November 5, 2002, suspected of plotting a chemical attack upon the London Underground. In February 2003, Khadri was charged with attempting to create a chemical weapon between 1 January 2002 and 20 January 2003. These charges were later dropped. Khadri was a close associate of Abu Doha and the "Hamburg ring". Khadri was later convicted with 9 others of plotting nail bomb attacks on Strasbourg Christmas market.

The information on Marwan Ben-Ahmed's computer led to four arrests. On December 24, 2002 at a housing complex outside Lyon in southern France, Menad Benchelalli was arrested. He and Marwan Ben-Ahmed were among 25 people convicted and jailed on June 14, 2006 of plotting attacks against various targets in Paris. All were members of the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), whose long-standing links with Al Qaeda became formalized on September 14, 2006.

Benchelalli's family had a history of radicalism. His father Chellali (right), a radical imam at a mosque in Vénissieux, Lyon, was also convicted on June 14 last year. Chellali had been arrested in January 2004, along with another of his sons, Hafid, his wife Hafsa, and three others. An official from the Interior Ministry said that Menad Benchellali had been trained at Al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan in poisons and had been actively trying to produce a biological weapon. He was experimenting with botulism and ricin, and had tested his chemicals upon animals, the official claimed. He said: "A cell around the Benchellali family was trying to manufacture chemical and biological weapons for attacks around Europe."

The toxins had been stored in 70 centiliter flasks and in Nivea face cream jars, which had been given to a local chemist, Mourad Merabet. Relatives of the family had assisted in purchase of 9 to 10 kilograms of ingredients. Raids at the relatives' homes had also uncovered chemical formulas for "explosives and a substance that could make toxic gas." Merabet denied holding the toxins, but did admit destroying Menad Benchellali's computer hard disk, upon which chemical recipes were stored. Chellali, Menad's father, admitted that he had known of his son's attempts to make deadly toxins. Chellali Benchellali was deported from France on September 7, 2006.

The toxins which the Benchellalis were creating were said to be botulism and ricin, though neither of these substances was found. Botulism (Clostridium botulinum toxin) and ricin (a phytotoxin with an extremely complex molecular structure) are deadly. A single drop of botulinum toxin within a ventilation system can be fatal. According to AFP, ricin is 6,000 times more deadly than cyanide. It is effective in quantities no bigger than a grain of salt. On September 11, 1978, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was stabbed with an umbrella in London, which injected a micro-pellet containing ricin. Markov died a week later.

Ricin is derived from beans of the Castor Oil plant (Ricinus communis). It featured in the plans of another Algerian terrorist - Kamel Bourgass (aka Nadir Habra), who had arrived in the UK as an illegal immigrant in 2000. In January 2003, MI5 received information from Algeria, obtained from informant Mohammed Meguerba, who was in custody. Meguerba mentioned Bourgass, and said that he was creating toxins which he said, were inside two Nivea face-cream jars, like the French toxins discovered a year later.

On January 3, 2003, when police went to arrest Bourgass from his apartment above a chemist's shop at 352 High Road, Wood Green, north London, castor oil beans, processing equipment (a grinder, mortar and pestle, a bottle of acetone, funnel, thermometers and scales) and photocopied recipes for ricin production were found.

Bourgass (right) had fled to an apartment in Crumpsall Lane, Manchester. When on January 14 police tried to enter this apartment, Bourgass stabbed Detective Constable Stephen Oake eight times as he tried to escape. The detective died from his wounds. Bourgass was convicted in June 2004 and given a life sentence for DC Oake's murder. In April 2005, Bourgass was found guilty of "conspiracy to commit a public nuisance by using poisons and explosives" and he was sentenced to 17 years' jail.

Bourgass had frequently slept at Abu Hamza's mosque in Finsbury Park, north London, where he photocopied his chemical recipes. He had used the mosque as his mailing address. Following Bourgass' arrest, the mosque was raided on January 20, 2003. Hidden behind ceiling panels were found false passports, CS gas canisters and, ominously, chemical warfare protection suits and a gas mask.

Bourgass had intended to use the ricin which he was developing to attack the busy Heathrow Express rail link, placing ricin on hand rails and in lavatories on the trains. During his 2005 trial, chemical experts confirmed that his production methods - using a solvent to break down fats and oils in the castor oil beans, filtering the substance and evaporating to form a powder - would have been effective. An expert from Porton Down chemical research center recreated the method and tested it on mice.

Bourgass had 3 recipes for cyanide, including the one which had been used to create Zyklon B, the gas-forming pellets employed by Nazis in Auschwitz and other death camps. He also had a recipe for a poison derived from potatoes and one for creating botulinum toxin from excrement and rotten meat. The chemical expert said this was the hardest poison to produce, though it exceeded the others in its toxic potential.

Ramzi Yousef had added cyanide to the explosives which he used to detonate beneath the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. 6 people were killed and 1,000 were injured. The cyanide was destroyed in the explosion. If it had survived the blast, the casualty count would have been higher.

On Monday, February 2, 2004, ricin was found in a mailroom at Capitol Hill. The substance was found on an automatic mail sorter in an office used for the mail of Bill Frist, then Senate Majority Leader, at Dirksen Senate Office Building. Staff were checked, but there was no human contamination. Five months later Islamist group Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade claimed responsibility for this attack, but this assertion has been doubted.

On March 30, 2004, six people who belonged to the Islamist group Al-Muhajiroun were arrested in Britain. One individual was arrested in Canada, and another was arrested later. Seven of these individuals are currently on trial in London. The trial mainly concerns their purchase of 1,320 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which can be used as a conventional explosive. However, shortly after their arrests, news focused on their alleged plans to employ the highly toxic chemical Osmium tetroxide for a chemical attack against either Gatwick airport or the London underground. Though no osmium tetroxide was found in their possession, this was the first time the chemical had been mentioned in such a context.

Exotic chemicals aside, products from nature can have horrendous effects. A worrying list of such "natural" agents can be found here. A fortnight after 9/11, public figures in the United States began receiving envelopes containing strange powder. This substance contained spores of anthrax. More than 21 people were affected and five people died.

Anthrax (spores of the bacterium Bacillus anthracis) produces a systemic infection in two forms - cutaneous, where skin contact causes lesions, and the more serious inhalation anthrax, where the spores enter the lungs and multiply. Half of the victims developed inhalation anthrax, and all of the fatalities had developed this form of the infection. The first victim to die was Robert Stevens, who worked at a Boca Raton tabloid called The Sun.

One of the victims of the attack was Johanna C. Huden, an editorial assistant for the New York Post. A small red spot appeared on her middle finger, and eventually turned black. She was suffering from cutaneous anthrax infection and survived.

Postal workers in Brentwood Washington DC fell ill, with two dying from inhalation of the spores which had apparently come from letters addressed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Two postal workers from New Jersey also suffered from inhalation anthrax but survived. Additional letters had been sent to ABC News, CBS News and NBC News.

What makes this case disturbing is that the person (or persons) responsible for sending mail containing the anthrax spores was never caught. Years after the event, questions still remain about how the anthrax spores were obtained, and whether such an attack is likely to be repeated.

The anthrax attacks raised important challenges to national security. Potentially, there are other "toxic shocks" which could be far more devastating, as I will discuss in Part Three.

Adrian Morgan

© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at March 20, 2007 8:06 AM

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Posted by: Catawhumpus at March 20, 2007 11:54 AM

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