Severin Carrell and Raymond Whitaker carried this story in Independent
on Sunday last Sunday, see below (the full story is (-or was) via the
Indy 'Portfolio' access- which is fair
enough as Newspapers have to make money to survive ):
<www.independent.co.uk>.
Ricin: The plot that never was
A deadly poison said to be at the heart of a terrorist conspiracy
against Britain led to a dire warning of another al-Qa'ida attack in
the West. The Government was swift to act on the fear that such a find
generated. But, as Severin Carrell and Raymond Whitaker report, far
from being a major threat, the real danger existed only in the mind of
a misguided individual living in a dingy north London bedsit
17 April 2005
It was a weapon of mass destruction, a warning that we all needed to be
"vigilant and alert". Weeks before the invasion of Iraq, it was
presented as the final proof that Saddam Hussein was in league with
al-Qa'ida. Anyone wanting to exploit the politics of fear could
scarcely conjure up anything more potent than the news that a suspected
terrorist cell had been making ricin, one of the deadliest poisons
known to man, in a north London flat.
Article Length: 2978 words (approx.)
---
Rose F
On Friday, April 22, 2005, at 08:23 pm, Alan Hinnrichs wrote:
> Duncan Campbell's expose of the fake ricin plot has mysteriously
> disappeared from the Guardian website. I tried searching the Guardian
> website but no trace can be found of it.D-Notice anyone?
>
> Send instant messages to your online friends
> http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
On Friday, April 22, 2005, at 10:51 pm, Antony Wright wrote:
> Looks like it may be a D notice. The details are possibly that Porton
> Down scientists cannot be named. That would affect the following lines.
>
> A few days later in the lab, Dr Martin Pearce, head of the Biological
> Weapons Identification Group, found that there was no ricin.
>
> Nevertheless, claimed Porton Down chemistry chief Dr Chris Timperley,
> they showed a "common origin and progression" in the methods, thus
> linking the London group of north Africans to Afghanistan and Bin
> Laden.
>
> The weakness of Timperley's case was that neither he nor the
> intelligence services had examined any other documents that could have
> been the source.
>
> The article may well re-appear with the above removed.
>
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