Ricin Fiasco
The Truth About
The The ‘Ricin Cell’: There Was No Ricin
And No Cell
20 April 2005 |
A
PDF of this briefing is available here
Posted: 10 August
2005 |
THE WILD CLAIMS
On 13 Apr., an Algerian asylum-seeker named Kamel Bourgass was
found guilty of plotting to use poisons to cause a ‘public
nuisance’ in Britain. This rather minor offence has been
blown up into a national crisis by the British Government, the
police, the intelligence services, and the mass media, in yet
another example of ‘counter terror’ scaremongering.
At the start of the misnamed ‘ricin affair’ in Jan.
2003, the public was told that an al Qaeda cell had been arrested
before it could launch a terrorist attack using the chemical
weapon ‘ricin’. The public was told that the police
had discovered traces of ricin in the flat used by the cell.
It has now been established that there was no ‘ricin’,
and no ‘cell’.
BRAVE FACES IN SCOTLAND YARD
‘Senior Scotland Yard officers are putting on a brave
face even though several privately admitted that the outcome
of the case was “disappointing”... [After] one of
the biggest operations mounted by SO13, the Yard’s anti-terrorist
branch, only one man, Kamel Bourgass, was convicted of a terrorist
offence’—his eight co-defendants were found not
guilty or had charges dropped against them. (Sunday Times, 17
Apr., p. 4) It was ‘a blow’ to police and the intelligence
services, who ‘arrested more than 100 people and visited
26 countries’ during a two-year investigation. (Times,
14 Apr., p. 1)
Defence lawyers said (accurately) that it was ‘a “catastrophic”
embarassment for the government’s war on terror.’
(FT, 14 Apr., p. 5)
THE TRUTH ABOUT RICIN
Kamel Bourgass confessed to having copied out a recipe for making
ricin—a poison which can kill if it is injected, eaten
or inhaled. ‘The jury heard that the plan had been to
kill people by smearing ricin on door handles in Holloway, north
London. But Prof [Alistair] Hay [the toxicologist] said: “With
these recipes they could not have killed people. Ricin is not
absorbed through the skin.” ’ (Guardian, 14 Apr.
<http://tinyurl.com/crum5>)
The US Government’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention
website says of ‘skin and eye exposure’: ‘Ricin
in the powder or mist form can cause redness and pain of the
skin and the eyes.’ <http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/ricin/facts.asp>
Redness and pain. That is what Bourgass was convicted of conspiring
to inflict on North Londoners.
‘Porton Down scientists who tried
to recreate Bourgass’s experiments found that they might
have produced material sufficient to kill a large sheep, but
not a single human being, let alone thousands.’ (Editorial,
Observer, 17 Apr. <http://tinyurl.com/ctxda>)
THE SHIFTING CHARGES
This is partly why Bourgass was convicted only of conspiring
to cause a “public nuisance”—‘a common
law offence said by the Crown to involve plotting to use poisons
to cause “disruption, fear and injury”... the jury
could not decide on a more serious charge of conspiracy to murder
using poisons, including ricin and cyanide, for which he had
recipes. He will not face retrial on this charge’. (Daily
Telegraph, 14 Apr., p. 1)
‘Charges against the [defendants] claiming they conspired
to make chemical or biological weapons were quietly withdrawn
from some of the original indictments drawn up by the Crown
Prosecution Service. Instead, prosecutors substituted charges
of “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”—a
highly unusual charge dismissed by defence lawyers as a “Mickey
Mouse” offence. Because of a gagging order granted by
the court at the request of government lawyers, the fact that
the chemical weapons charges had been dropped was not reported.’
(Sunday Times, 17 Apr., p. 4)
RICIN NOT FOUND
When a team from Porton Down chemical and biological weapons
research centre entered Bourgass’s flat on 5 Jan. 2003,
it detected the presence of ricin: ‘But these were high
sensitivity field detectors, for use where a false negative
result could be fatal’. ‘A few days later in the
lab, Dr Martin Pearce, head of the Biological Weapons Identification
Group, found that there was no ricin.’ (Duncan Campbell,
Guardian, 14 Apr.)
There are different accounts of what happened next. Duncan Campbell
says in the Guardian that, ‘when this result was passed
to London, the message reportedly said the opposite.’
The Sunday Times says that Porton Down ‘only formally
informed Scotland Yard about their new findings at a meeting
in March [2005]’: ‘Sources in the case say Andrew
Gould, a scientist at Porton Down whose role was to liaise with
Scotland Yard, has accepted responsibility for the bungle. Gould
admitted in court that he had not passed on the test results
and that the public had been misled as a result.’ (Sunday
Times, 17 Apr., p. 4)
This is contradicted by another Guardian report which says that,
‘Porton Down documents show that by January 8 scientists
at the defence research facility had written to the police declaring
there was no ricin on several items from the flat. (Guardian,
14 Apr. <http://tinyurl.com/crum5>) An intriguing mystery.
Whatever the truth behind these confusing reports, it is a fact
that the non-existence of the ricin supposedly at the heart
of the ‘ricin’ trial received little attention in
the media. The Telegraph left it to the last paragraph of their
front-page story to tell its readers that the initial ricin
scare had been a “false positive result”. The Guardian
left it to the 25th para in its 28-para main story to note that
ricin was not actually found.
AL QAEDA NON-CONNECTION—MEGUERBA
There was no ricin. There was no ‘cell’. What about
al Qaeda? The Telegraph said Bourgass was ‘trained by
al-Qa’eda to be one of its top poisoners’—‘a
trained assassin and one of Osama bin Laden’s most ruthless
followers’. (14 Apr., pp. 1, 2) The only evidence to this
effect came from the confession of a fellow Algerian, Mohammed
Meguerba, under ‘interrogation’ by the Algerian
security forces.
Interesting, then, that, ‘Evidence from Meguerba was withheld
from the jury during the trial, after the prosecution argued
he was an unreliable witness.’ ‘Although information
said to come from Meguerba was used to mount the raid that led
to the ricin arrests, he later changed his story when interviewed
in Algeria by British police officers, saying that he played
no part in preparing the poisons and had merely heard Bourgass
talking about his expertise as a poison maker.’ (Observer,
17 Apr., p. 8)
AL QAEDA NON-CONNECTION—THE
RECIPES & GSPC
The prosecution argued that Bourgass had copied chemical recipes
from al Qaeda manuals. But ‘It [Bourgass’s recipe
book] had nothing to do with al-Qaeda and was translated into
Arabic from American survival handbooks. This was demonstrated
by Duncan Campbell, the espionage expert, and accepted as such
by Porton Down, the MOD’s chemical research establishment.’
(Simon Jenkins, Times, 15 Apr., p. 20)
It has been alleged (but not proven) that Bourgass is a member
of the Algerian terror group the GSPC. But the GSPC is not al
Qaeda.
As the FT notes, ‘the trial has ended without producing
any definitive evidence of Mr Bourgass’s links with any
terrorist organisation, and with questions remaining over his
true identity and that of a co-conspirator Mohamed Meguerba
who remains detained in Algeria.’ (14 Apr., p. 5)
MEGUERBA—AGENT PROVOCATEUR?
‘The Observer has discovered that [Meguerba] was forced
by his country’s intelligence service to make a telephone
call to Britain to “provoke” his associates into
further action... The news raises the possibility that Meguerba
was working for the Algerians as an agent provocateur... One
call had been made to “locate” an individual of
interest to Algerian intelligence, and a second to “provoke”
another person.’ (17 Apr., p. 8) Interestingly, ‘Bourgass
himself said that he had copied out the poison recipes at Meguerba’s
request.’ (Sunday Telegraph, 17 Apr., p. 21)
BOURGASS—MURDERER
The one crime definitely committed by Bourgass was the killing
of Detective Constable Stephen Oake, part of the team that arrested
Bourgass. However, ‘a vital question remains unanswered...
was he a hardened terrorist, or a fugitive scared out of his
wits at being sent home.’ Bourgass is a failed asylum
seeker turned illegal immigrant. (Independent, 15 Apr., p. 42)
RICIN AND THE WAR
‘Tony Blair claimed at the time of Bourgass’s arrest
just before the Iraq war, in flagrant contempt of court, that
he was intent on launching “weapons of mass destruction”
with “huge potential”... Peter Hain predicted a
“ricin attack”, whatever that is, on the House of
Commons. All this was garbage.’ (Simon Jenkins, Times,
15 Apr., p. 20) Blair went to the Commons in Feb. 2003 ‘to
tell MPs that the alleged conspiracy was “powerful evidence”
of a continuing terror threat to the nation.’ (Independent,
14 Apr., p. 4) George W. Bush and his Cabinet also used ‘the
ricin plot’ to build a justification for the invasion
of Iraq.
We know now that there was no ricin, and
no ‘cell’. One man experimented with poisons—showing
no signs of preparing to use them in this country. There is
no evidence (apart from the unreliable Meguerba) as to the intended
targets of ‘the plot’ or as to Bourgass’s
alleged terrorist affiliations. The ‘chemical weapon’
was not lethal, but merely irritating to the skin. The pathetic
reality behind the lies that led to war.
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