[Excerpt: The charges stemmed from the discovery of traces of the poison ricin in a London apartment in January 2003, a find that sparked fears of an al Qaida cell with designs to strike in London....In the end, only one of the nine suspects was convicted. ...A jury acquitted four suspects of conspiracy to murder on Friday, and on Wednesday prosecutors dropped charges against four others -- three Algerian men and a Libyan.
Men cleared over UK 'ricin plot' http://64.236.16.116/2005/WORLD/europe/04/13/britain.ricin.ap/index.html Wednesday, April 13, 2005 Posted: 11:49 AM EDT (1549 GMT) LONDON, England (AP) -- A jury has found an alleged al Qaeda operative guilty of murdering a policeman who had been attempting to arrest him for a plot to spread the deadly toxin ricin, officials said Wednesday. Four other suspects were acquitted. Algerian militant Kamel Bourgass was sentenced in June to life in prison, but a judge only lifted reporting restrictions Wednesday, after prosecutors dropped charges against four more suspects whose trial had been due to start soon. The charges stemmed from the discovery of traces of the poison ricin in a London apartment in January 2003, a find that sparked fears of an al Qaida cell with designs to strike in London. In the end, only one of the nine suspects was convicted. A jury acquitted four suspects of conspiracy to murder on Friday, and on Wednesday prosecutors dropped charges against four others -- three Algerian men and a Libyan. After the raid on a north London apartment on Jan. 14, 2003, Bourgass went on the run to Manchester, northwest England. He stabbed to death Detective Constable Stephen Oake and knifed three other policemen during a raid on a Manchester property nine days later. Detectives said Bourgass had been trained in Afghanistan in camps run by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. According to an alleged co-conspirator, who cooperated with authorities when he was arrested in Algeria, Bourgass had been planning to smear poison on the door handles of cars and buildings in London. In the London raid, police found recipes and ingredients for poisons including ricin, cyanide and botulinum, and the blueprint for a bomb. Scientists who followed the recipes produced enough ricin and cyanide to kill hundreds of people, prosecutors said. "These were no playtime recipes," prosecutor Nigel Sweeney said during the trial. "These are recipes that experts give credence to and experiments show work. They are scientifically viable and potentially deadly." After his murder conviction, Bourgass faced a second trial, alongside four others, on conspiracy to murder charges. The jury failed to reach a verdict on Bourgass and acquitted the others. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. enditem ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Take a look at donorschoose.org, an excellent charitable web site for anyone who cares about public education! http://us.click.yahoo.com/_OLuKD/8WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
