Western Resistance

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March 22, 2007

Islamists And Bio-Chemical Terror: Part Three

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

Toxic Shock: Part Three

Biological agents such as botulinum toxin, ricin or anthrax as biological weapons are potentially effective - only a few cases need to be recognized to create widespread panic and fear, the goal of the terrorist. When Kamel Bourgass used facilities at Abu Hamza's Finsbury Park Mosque to develop his program to manufacture botulinum, cyanide and ricin, the latter substance was mentioned in a notorious book. The Encyclopedia of the Afghani Jihad exists in 11 volumes. Abu Hamza, who lost his hands and one eye while bungling his explosives lessons at Midhat Mursi's training camp in Darunta, Afghanistan, possessed an entire set of these volumes. In 1999, these had been confiscated from Hamza by police, but were later returned to him.

The Arabic-language Encyclopedia details explosives manufacture, and suggests Western bomb targets. It also includes details on using ricin as one of the "poisons that the holy warrior can prepare and use without endangering his health". When Hamza was convicted on February 7, 2006 of soliciting murder, and sentenced to seven years' jail, he was also convicted under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for his possession of the "Encyclopedia".

There is an anti-toxin for botulinum, and a vaccine exists for anthrax, but there is no cure for ricin poisoning. Actual diseases that then spread by contagion or infection are more apocalyptic in their outcomes. Once unleashed they are hard to contain.

One biological agent which has received much coverage as a potential bio-weapon is smallpox (Variola major), which was included with other Soviet biowarfare agents in 1980, being discontinued in 1992. The last natural case of smallpox occurred in Somalia in 1977 following a campaign of eradication by the World Health Organization. In May 1980 the world was declared smallpox-free.

The few stores of smallpox around the world are closely guarded. Vaccination programs resumed in 2002. Despite this, people who were vaccinated before 1980 will have little resistance to effects of live virus. Even vaccination can cause hazards. The two-year-old son of a US soldier based in Iraq is currently in hospital in Chicago. The soldier had been vaccinated on his tour of duty, but had been unexpectedly brought home. Here, his son touched the vaccination site and is now in a critical condition, suffering from Eczema vaccinatum. Between 1959 and 1968, only 12 US cases of this condition were reported, with an 18% mortality among those affected.

Smallpox, though hard to obtain, remains stable when added to an aerosol, and once dispersed it can be spread by touch or inhalation to other individuals. It can persist on blankets, and scabs fallen from the skin of an infected individual can remain infectious for up to two years. A hypothetical scenario of a smallpox attack is produced by the Center for Disease Control. The epidemic would develop rapidly and inexorably. Once a person becomes infected, vaccination is useless.

Viral agents respect no borders. As Frank Gardner of ESRC states: "A deliberate release into our highly mobile society could have global consequences. Ultimately, western countries are better equipped to contain and deal with such an outbreak than most Muslim ones are."

Credible agents of widespread destruction within a limited area are more likely to be of chemical or bacterial origin than viral. Radioactive chemicals, products of the modern age, have actively been examined by Al Qaeda. If a nation such as Iran (with a dedicated program) has still not managed to create nuclear weaponry, the chances of Al Qaeda doing so, without necessary centrifuges, enriched uranium supplies, hexaflouride gas etc, a fissile nuclear device is still beyond bin Laden's reach.

Despite this, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, between 1992 and 2002 there were at least 175 known attempts by terrorists or criminals to acquire radioactive material. A 17-page document entitled Companies and Organizations of Proliferation Concern, prepared by MI5 in 2003, lists more than 300 organizations that have obtained WMD and nuclear technology. Of these, 114 came from Iran and 95 came from Pakistan, hiding behind "front" organizations. The United Arab Emirates is said by MI5 to be the hub of such illicit dealings.

For Al Qaeda, the most viable use of radioactive material is either to create a "dirty bomb" or radiological dispersion device (RDD) or alternatively to mount conventional explosive attacks upon existing nuclear facilities.

In Australia, the experimental nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights outside Sydney has already been targeted twice by potential Muslim terrorists. In 2003, Willie Brigitte, a French national originally from Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, had been deported from Australia. His lawyer then denied that Brigitte had been involved in a lot to blow up the Lucas Heights reactor. This plot had involved a cell of Sydney-based Islamists. On Thursday last week, Brigitte was jailed in Paris for nine years for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise."

On November 8, 2005 several Muslims were arrested in Melbourne and Sydney. These included Algerian Salafist preacher Abdul Nacer Benbrika and some of his followers. The trial of some of these individuals is now underway. Surveillance of the suspects had gone on for 18 months. Benbrika had been recorded in February 2005 saying: "If we want to die for jihad we have to have maximum damage. Maximum damage. Damage their buildings, everything. Damage their lives to show them. In this we will have to be careful." The main target of these attacks was the Lucas Heights reactor.

One of the individuals connected with the cell that planned to attack the European Parliament with sarin gas in February 2001 was Tunisian-born soccer player Nizar Trabelsi (above). He was arrested on September 13 2001 in Belgium. He admitted that he intended to be a suicide bomber, who planned to drive a car bomb into the NATO military base Kleine Brogel, which housed nuclear weapons. On September 30, 2003 he was jailed for 10 years.

In 2005 an Arabic-language website called Al -Firdaws, or "Paradise" published an 80-page bomb-making manual, dedicated to the "commander of the jihad fighters, Sheikh Osama bin Laden, for the purpose of jihad for the sake of Allah." The manual gave specific instructions on how to create a RDD. John Hassard, a physicist from Imperial College, London, stated that these instructions were accurate and practical, rather than theoretical.

One famous American Islamist, Jose Padilla (right), has been linked with plans to create a RDD. US Attorney General John Ashcroft had previously stated that Padilla had conspired to create such a device, but when Padilla appeared at a federal court in Miami on January 12, 2006, no mention of this was included in the charges laid against him.

In Afghanistan in 2001 Padilla had met Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubadayah, who sent him to Lahore, Pakistan for "training". There the pair were said to have developed the "plot" to create a dirty bomb, or "radiological dispersion device", using radioactive materials which would be stolen from within the US. The intended target of this plot was Washington DC.

One individual who was closely involved with al-Qaeda was Dhiren Barot. A Hindu convert to Islam, he used several aliases, including Essa al-Hindi. Under this pseudonym, he wrote a book detailing his experiences as a terrorist in Kashmir. It was revealed last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had admitted to masterminding the 9/11 attacks and other atrocities. Long before this confession, he had spoken of meeting "Essa al-Hindi". Their meeting had taken place in an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 1998.

Barot (below) was arrested in August 2004, with a group of his "soldiers". It was not until October 12, 2006, when Barot pleaded guilty at Woolwich Crown Court to plotting terror attacks in the US and Britain, that the judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, allowed reporting restrictions to be lifted. Barot had planned attacks upon the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup buildings in New York, and the Prudential building in Newark.

Knowing his associations with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, architect of 9/11, videos made in New York by Barot in April 2001 are disturbing. Two of these featured the World Trade Center towers. In both video clips, Barot turned the camera so that they lay on their side. In one, he makes the sound of an explosion. These clips were found on a tape, inserted within a commercial video of the Bruce Willis movie "Die Hard With a Vengeance", which details terror attacks upon New York. The clips (mpeg format) can be found here and here.

On November 7 2006, Barot was jailed for life. He was given a minimum of 40 years, meaning he will not be free until he is 74.

Barot made several plans for devastating attacks in Britain and the US. Barot had carefully researched the potential of manufacturing a dirty bomb or RDD. Much of his research took place in Birkbeck College, using a forged identity pass. The Metropolitan Police have provided his research and documentation for a RDD, though sensitive passages have been obscured. They can be found here and here.

Barot was aware that an RDD would not cause massive loss of life, but would be, as he called them, "Weapons of Mass Disruption". Cleaning up costs for materials with long "half-lives"would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and create widespread financial, tourist and business disruption. The radioactive materials that Barot systematically investigated included cobalt 60. He wrote that a few grams of this, dispersed via conventional explosives, could close an area the size of Manhattan.

Other radioactive substances that Barot examined included Cesium 137 (one of the radioactive isotopes released by the Chernobyl disaster), Tritium, Strontium 90, Californium 252, and Americium 241. Americium 241 was the substance which Barot decided was the most practical for the purposes of a RDD. Discovered in 1944, this product has a half-life of 432.2 years. It emits both alpha particles and gamma rays, and if inhaled or consumed orally, it is deadly. Of all the substances examined by Bharot, this is the most easily obtained as small amounts are found in smoke detectors.

Last year, one radioactive substance which was not examined by Barot made international headlines, when it caused a London-based Russian dissident to die on November 23. Polonium 210 was discovered in 1897 by Marie Curie, which she isolated from pitchblende. It can be extracted from uranium-containing rocks or from radium-226. However, a nuclear reactor would be required to produce commercial amounts.

Alexander Litvenenko had been deliberately exposed to the substance on November 1, probably orally ingested. Within hours of being poisoned he began to feel ill and vomited throughout the night. His stomach pains continued and eventually his hair began to fall out, but even when admitted to hospital, doctors assumed he was suffering from thallium (which causes hair loss). Up until four days before Litvenenko's death, his doctors still assumed he had been poisoned with thallium. The subsequent investigations into the circumstances of Litvenenko's poisoning and death involve 48 countries.

Polonium-210 emits alpha particles, which are unable to penetrate through a sheet of paper. However, inside the body, these create havoc, made worse by polonium's ability to bind with various organs in the body. Dr Andrea Sella of University College, London, said: "An alpha particle strikes a strand of DNA. It snips it in two, which is bad news, or glues two strands together. Either way normal cell repair mechanisms may be unable to sort that out. The result is that essentially the cellular command and control network (in the body) falls apart." The Polonium-210 almost certainly came from Russia. In the post-Soviet world, radioactive substances such as Polonium-210, and toxins such as dioxin (used to poison Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko in 2004) appear to be easily accessible.

Vladimir Putin denied that Litvenenko's death had anything to do with his establishment, even though traces of the substance were found on UK-bound planes which had brought individuals from Russia. At the Pine Bar sushi restaurant where Litvenenko had met one of these men, seven other people were found to have ingested small quantities of Polonium-210. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) announced on 28 November that 68 individuals had been assessed as needing medical assistance after possible exposure to the isotope.

The existence of a black market in radioactive substances has long been the subject of conjecture. In 1998, workers at one Russian nuclear facility tried to smuggle out 18.5 kilograms of nuclear material. If Putin is telling the truth, and his agents had nothing to do with Litvenenko's death, then the world is at greater risk of a biochemical and radiological attack than ever before. If radioactive substances are available for illegal operations, then the black market in these materials does exist. It will only be a matter of time before these materials fall into the hands of terrorists.

Adrian Morgan

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Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at March 22, 2007 8:59 PM

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