Ricin: The plot that never was

[deacon]

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

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.

But there was no ricin - a fact suppressed for more than two years.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=630187

[rodeodance]

1. wmd=the fear instilled in officials!

[scarletlib]

2. what agreat in depth fact filled article

too bad we don't get this kind of reporting in this country.

[mrfrapp]

3. Don't feel too bad...

...that's as far as this story will get in the UK too. I'm fully expecting to hear politicians talk of Ricin plots and what-not over the coming weeks without any offer of a contrary opinion from the media. I'm willing to agree that the UK media is "better" than the US media but reporting such as this is very rare.

What annoys me about this story is how utterly transparent it all is. For example, it was only six months ago or so when Blunkett was fussing over whether to allow evidence obtained under torture to be used in English Law courts. Well, we now know why he was so keen on the idea, don't we. I'm also appalled that the government's immediate response to the release of the majority of the suspects was to suggest that the law should be changed (weakened) so that its easier to "secure a conviction". In other words, the government considered these people guilty even before the trial. How this gets a free pass from the media I'll never know. It may not be written down on a piece of paper but I would have thought that "seperation of legislature from the judiciary" would strike most people as a good idea.

Don't forget that this "Ricin Plot" was used as part of the justification of joining in the "War On Terror" which in its turn, was used as justification for the invasion of Iraq (that Blair considers Ricin a "Weapon of Mass Destruction" demonstrates that he was deliberately conflating domestic terrorism with Iraq). So any evidence that this plot is a fantasy has to be suppressed, to the extent that the government is apparantly prepared to flout international law in the process.

[Frederik]

4. Thanks for that

I find this particularly interesting:

"In the dingy bedsits they occupied, using poison manuals downloaded from American survivalist websites"

So, rather than being linked to the so-called al-Qaeda, or to Saddam Hussein, he was surfing American survivalist websites... Got to love the irony.

[pretzel4gore]

5. this is georgebushamerica, where you can

make up truth as you go along....that way, there's no such thing as dishonesty (and thus, no such thing as sin, which only applies to teens masturbating etc)...it's 'winwin' all the way!
:crazy: :wtf: :argh: :puke: :eyes: :smoke: :think: :freak: :freak: :dunce: :nopity: :nopity: :hurts: