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| Substance Found in Train Station not Ricin |
| 2003-04-11 |
| French investigators said today that the contents of bottles found at a Paris train station last month and believed to be the poison ricin actually consisted of ground wheat germ and barley. They said the grain was mistakenly identified as ricin because it consists of protein whose structure is similar to that of ricin. I don't know about this, although it certainly wouldn't be the first false alarm we've seen. The grain was found in bottles discovered in a locker at the Gare de Lyon. After initial tests, the French authorities said the bottles contained small amounts of the deadly poison ricin. Later tests by the Defense Ministry proved this was not so, the Paris prosecutor's office said today. The containers were found at the train station on March 17, together with two other vials of powder and a bottle of liquid. A small quantity of ricin was found in London in January during an antiterrorist sweep in which six men were arrested. But French officials were evidently still not entirely satisfied that the substances found were not in some way related to a planned terrorist attack. A senior Interior Ministry official was quoted by the daily Le Parisien as saying that the substances may have been "the product of an experiment" or the remains of an effort to produce a toxic weapon. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |