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| Terror Networks |
| Ricin Plotters Linked to al-Qaida Network |
| 2003-01-16 |
| Two men arrested by police in the northern English city of Manchester are part of a network of Algerian extremists influenced by al-Qaida and in possession the deadly poison ricin, news reports said Thursday. One of the men was said to have fatally stabbed a police officer and injured four others when officers raided a Manchester flat on Tuesday. The Guardian newspaper quoted an unidentified government source as saying the British security services regarded the network of Algerians as the "greatest al-Qaida-related threat in Europe, the most potent threat after al-Qaida itself." The group is linked to the deadly poison ricin, discovered in a London apartment Jan. 5, the newspaper reported. But The Guardian said police had been investigating the network - which the paper described as an offshoot of Algeria's radical Armed Islamic Group insurgency - for weeks before the poison find. A senior U.S. official traveling in Europe said on Thursday the men arrested in the alleged ricin plot were linked to Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group in northern Iraq which is suspected of ties to al-Qaida and possibly to Saddam Hussein's regime. That would be handy, if you had some proof. The Guardian said police do not believe the Algerians are directly linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network but were inspired by the group and may be tied to other violent Muslim extremist organizations. Some members have attended terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, where chemical and biological weapons like ricin may have been present, the paper said. Several British newspapers said police who raided the Manchester flat on Tuesday were surprised to find the two top terror suspects there. The papers said they had intended to arrest an Algerian who had remained in Britain after his asylum request was rejected and was also wanted under anti-terrorism legislation. Officers were surprised to find two others at the apartment and did not immediately realize they were known terror suspects, the reports said. The Times, which said police are increasingly concerned about the possibility of a chemical attack here, said the two were on the most-wanted list of suspected North African terrorists in Britain. Names, please? Police failed to handcuff the men, and an hour after they began interrogating them one broke free, ran into the kitchen and seized a large knife. Detective constable Stephen Oake, 40, was killed and four other officers injured. The Guardian said the killer was "a very senior player" in the Algerian network behind the ricin plot. "Nigel, please order a extra liter of giggle juice. We have a VIP to entertain." Manchester police said only that the raid was linked to the ricin discovery in London. They did not identify the three men arrested during the operation, saying only that they were North Africans aged 23, 27 and 29. One was being questioned about the ricin, another about Oake's death, and the third was being handed over to immigration authorities. On Thursday, Manchester police said they had arrested a fourth man, a 32-year-old Algerian, under the Terrorism Act overnight. A police spokeswoman said he had turned himself in at a police station in the Collyhurst neighborhood of Manchester and added that the Manchester department would hand him over to the anti-terrorist branch of London's Metropolitan Police. She did not know whether the suspect had any connection to the North Africans arrested in the Tuesday raid but that he was not directly linked to the alleged ricin plot. If he turned himself in, he's a nobody. "The arrest is part of the nationwide, ongoing investigation into international terrorism but not directly linked to the discovery of ricin in the house in London," the spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity. Ricin, derived from the castor bean plant, is one of the world's deadliest toxins and has been linked in the past to al-Qaida and to Iraq. After they have finished "questioning" these guys, we should have a very interesting story, I hope. |
| Posted by:Steve |