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Terror Networks
AQAP planning deadly ricin bomb attack
2011-08-15
Intelligence officials have warned Barack Obama that a dangerous regional arm of Al Qaeda is trying to produce the deadly poison ricin to use in attacks against the United States.

Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen is believed to have been trying to acquire large quantities of castor beans, which contain the toxic rich protein. It is thought the poison would be packed around small explosives which could disperse the white powdery substance on detonation.
How effective would this be in bomb form? I remember a discussion here about chlorine bombs in
Iraq, where the Conclusion was that the explosion would be expected to burn off most of the chlorine gas, rather than being available to harm bystanders...
It is so deadly that even a speck of it can kill someone if inhaled or taken into the blood stream. But there are limits on ricin because it loses its potency in dry, sunny conditions, like those in Yemen, and is not easily absorbed through the skin like other nerve agents.

Al Qaeda intend on detonating the explosives in enclosed areas like shopping centres and airports.

Mr Obama was briefed by top security aides about the latest threat last year but was told by that an attack is not imminent. Senior administration officials said ricin was among the threats being tracked by a secret government task force created after printer cartridges packed with powerful explosives were found in cargo bound for Chicago in October 2010, according to the New York Times. It said the task force was working with Saudi officials and with the remnants of Yemen's intelligence agencies to counter the threat.

The virtual collapse of Yemen's government has enabled Al Qaeda to widen its control in the country and strengthen its operational ties with al Shabab, the Islamic militancy in Somalia. The US government is working with what is left of Yemen's intelligence agencies and those of neighbouring Saudi Arabia to try to root our terror plots early.

The poison was used in the 1978 assassination in London of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov and, in 2002, police raided a facility said to be plotting its manufacture in the UK capital.

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