LONDON, 9 January 2003 — British anti-terrorist police hunting for a potential cache of deadly ricin said yesterday they had arrested another man after traces of the poison were found in a north London apartment. Anti-terrorist police are now questioning seven men after seizing the poison — which some experts have linked to Al-Qaeda — in raids on Sunday.
At least six of the suspects are of North African origin. "The arrest is part of ongoing inquiries by the anti-terrorist branch and is linked to Sunday’s arrests," a London police spokesman said, adding that no further information would be released.
One security source told Reuters the first six men were Algerians whose likely intention was to infect people using a poisoned cream: a chilling scenario that would unleash widespread fear rather than mass deaths. "My best guess is that they were planning something like the anthrax incidents in the United States," Michael Yardley, a historian of terrorism, told Reuters.
Ricin, one of the deadliest naturally occurring poisons, is derived from castor plant beans, which are grown worldwide to produce castor oil. The government made it clear the arrests showed rogue groups were bent on hurting the West. "What this demonstrates is that there is a threat from international terrorism," said a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair. "There is a mass of intelligence passing across ministers’ desks."
In the drab suburb of Wood Green, where police found the deadly stash, locals in the large immigrant community voiced fears over Britain’s campaign against states such as Iraq. "It’s terrible, absolutely terrible it’s happened here," said 29-year-old Hasani Gezin, who thought he had put such troubles behind him when he left his native Kosovo for London.
"I use the Wood Green tube (underground railway) every day, it’s only a few minutes from here ... you never know what might happen," he said, shaking his head.
Police fear the traces of ricin and equipment they found in a Victorian terraced flat above an innocuous pharmacy could be just the tip of the iceberg.
"The important issue is that the material causing us concern is no longer there (at the flat)," said a police source quoted by the left-wing Guardian daily yesterday. "We need to find it," the source added. Amid fears that other suspects were at large with quantities of the substance, family doctors and hospitals across Britain were alerted to look out for anyone with signs of ricin poisoning.
Security sources said large amounts of the poison could still be in the hands of extremists in Britain or abroad, while doctors around the country were on alert for the flu-like symptoms linked to ricin.
As police only found a small amount of the poison, officers were on an urgent hunt for any other secret stockpiles that might be used to sow terror.
"There is serious concern it may have been moved somewhere that we don’t know about by other people who are at large and determined to carry out an attack," one anti-terrorist police source told the Daily Mirror newspaper.
Although fears of a potential chemical attack have swirled around Europe for months, this is the first hard evidence made public of the manufacture of a substance which could be used.
London police arrested three men in November amid reports of a planned cyanide gas attack on the capital’s Underground rail system but the government denied an attack was planned.
The arrests of three Algerians and a Moroccan in Paris in December also initially sparked fears that a chemical attack was being planning after police said they found two phials of chemicals and a personal protection suit. But France later said it believed the four suspected militants were planning a bomb attack.
Ricin, developed during World War II by the United States and its allies, has a long history of use in espionage, but experts say it is hard to use as an agent of mass death.
Its best known victim was Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, assassinated by a jab to the leg with a poison-tipped umbrella in London in 1978. He died a few days later. (R)
