WASHINGTON, 24 March 2003 — Al-Qaeda is on the verge of producing — or may already have produced — biological and chemical weapons, the Washington Post reported yesterday, citing documentary evidence and interrogations recently conducted by the US government.
Quoting “three people with access to written reports,” the Post reported that Al-Qaeda’s biochemical weapons program is considerably more advanced than US analysts suspected.
The picture continues to sharpen daily, one official said, because translation and analysis of the documents continues, and because the operative captured with them began divulging meaningful information about production plans only over the past several days.
Authorized government spokesmen declined to discuss the subject, saying it is classified. Evidence shows that Al-Qaeda leaders completed plans and obtained the materials required to manufacture two biological toxins — botulinum and salmonella — and the chemical poison cyanide, according to the newspaper.
They are also close to a feasible production plan for anthrax, a far more lethal weapon, which kills 90 percent of untreated victims if spread by inhalation and as many as 75 percent of those treated when the first symptoms become evident, the daily wrote.
Most of the new information comes from handwritten documents and computer hard drives seized during the March 1 capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, regarded by some government analysts as Al-Qaeda’s most important operational planner.
Meanwhile, an extremist on the run after being arrested and freed by German authorities investigating a deadly attack on a Tunisian synagogue is a top member of al-Qaeda, a magazine reported in Munich Saturday.
The man, identified only as 36-year-old Christian G. from Duisburg, acted as a messenger between the founder of the network, Osama Bin Laden, and his suspected deputy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan, Focus magazine said in an edition to appear today.
A German counter-espionage expert told Focus that Christian G’s suspected role “means he was part of Al-Qaeda’s inner circle”. FBI investigators said in the report that the man, a convert to Islam, met Sheikh Mohammed for the first time in April 2000 in an apartment in the Pakistani city of Karachi.
