The United States government has received information that an Arab group with links to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network may have experimented in northern Iraq with the deadly toxin ricin on animals and at least one person, a US official said Monday.
ABC News, which first reported on the activity, said US President George W. Bush rejected a proposal for an attack on this group. A US official, who spoke to AFP, said the group --Ansar al-Islam-- had been conducting the experiments over the last few months in an area not controlled by Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein.
"The information indicated they might be experimenting with ricin, including experiments with barnyard animals and reports of experimenting on at least one human," the official conveyed. The person experimented on was reported to have died, the official said, adding that the report could not be verified.
The US official said there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein knew about the group's activities. Ansar al-Islam is an Arab group that was first reported to be active in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq earlier on this year.
The official said there have been relationships between al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam but "it's not clear the nature or extent of those links."
According to ABC News, the Ansar al-Islam members exposed a man in a market place to the toxin and then followed him home, where he later died. (Albawaba.com)
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