January 9, 2003	Thursday	Ziqa’ad 5, 1423

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LONDON, Jan 8: British police launched an urgent hunt on Wednesday for deadly ricin after traces of the poison found in a dingy London suburb heightened fears of a chemical terror campaign across Europe.

Anti-terrorist police said they were questioning six north African men after seizing the poison — which some experts have linked to al Qaeda — in raids earlier this week.

One security source told Reuters the men were Algerians whose likely intention was to infect people using a poisoned cream: a chilling scenario that would unleash widespread fear rather than mass deaths.

“My best guess is they were planning something like the anthrax incidents that there have been in the United States,” Michael Yardley, a historian of terrorism, told Reuters.

As medical officials sought to quash fears of a sophisticated laboratory — the poison is so deadly that less than a milligram can kill — the government made it clear the arrests showed rogue groups were bent on hurting the West.

“What this demonstrates is that there is a threat from international terrorism,” said a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair. “There is a mass of intelligence passing across ministers’ desks.”

The ricin find is the first time police have made public a possible chemical plot.—Reuters