Wood Green ricin plot

Foiled terrorist plot

The Wood Green ricin plot was an alleged bioterrorism plot to attack the London Underground with ricin poison. The Metropolitan Police Service arrested six suspects on 5 January 2003, with one more arrested two days later. Within two days, the Biological Weapon Identification Group at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in Porton Down were sure that there was no trace of ricin on any of the articles that were found. This fact was initially misreported to other government departments as well as to the public, who only became aware of this in 2005. Reporting restrictions were in place before the public's perceptions could be corrected. The only conviction directly relating to terrorism was of Kamel Bourgass, sentenced to 17 years imprisonment for conspiring "together with other persons unknown to commit public nuisance by the use of poisons and/or explosives to cause disruption, fear or injury" on the basis of five pages of his hand written notes on how to make ricin, cyanide and botulinum. Bourgass had already been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of detective Stephen Oake, whom he stabbed to death during his arrest in Manchester. Bourgass also stabbed three other police officers in that incident; they all survived. All other suspects were either released without charge, acquitted, or had their trials abandoned.

Prime Minister Tony Blair referred to the case in a speech shortly after the arrests. Physicians throughout the United Kingdom were warned to watch for signs that patients had been poisoned by ricin, and the public health director for London urged the public not to be alarmed following some media reports. Britain's largest circulation tabloid newspaper, The Sun, reported the discovery of a "factory of death", and other newspapers warned on their front pages "250,000 of us could have died", "Poison gang on the loose" and "Killer with no antidote". The fact that no ricin had been found was known to some government departments very early on, but this information was not revealed to the public until after Bourgass's trial two years later, although in the interim it was cited in support of further terrorism laws. The "UK poison cell" featured in a slide used with the US Secretary of State Colin Powell's 5 February 2003 speech to the UN to build the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As late as February 2006, Chancellor Gordon Brown described it as a significant terrorism plot spanning 26 countries.

5 January 2003 – Police raided a flat above a pharmacy at 352 High Road, Wood Green, north London, and arrested six men on suspicion of manufacturing ricin intended for use in a terrorist poison attack on the London Underground. 7 January — A seventh man was arrested. 12 January — Five men and a woman were arrested in the Bournemouth area for terrorism involving ricin, but released without charge several days later. 14 January — Three men were arrested in Crumpsall, north Manchester, in a raid to detain a man who had been certified under part 4 of the Anti terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. Detective Constable Stephen Oake died after being stabbed eight times with a kitchen knife by Kamel Bourgass who was also there. 20 January — Police raided and closed the Finsbury Park mosque for several days as part of the investigation. Seven men were arrested; another was arrested in London the next day. 5 February – Colin Powell, the United States Secretary of State, referred to those arrested as the "UK poison cell" of a global terrorist network in making a case for military intervention in Iraq to the United Nations Security Council. A week later he testified to the Committee on International Relations of the United States House of Representatives that this ricin had originated in Iraq, though this was disputed immediately. 11 March — The Home Secretary issued control orders against ten terrorist suspects just released from detention connecting them to the ricin plot, even though it was alleged to have occurred while they were in custody. Letters of apology were sent two weeks later explaining that it was a "clerical error", but that they were still terrorist suspects. 21 March — Two vials falsely testing positive as ricin are found in a train station in Paris. These were said to be connected to an attack on the Russian embassy, until further tests proved that they were jars of wheat germ. 15 September 2005 — Two Two of the jurors who found them not guilty at the ricin trial expressed their sense of anger and betrayal at this. One of them 'Y', who in 1997 and 1998 was sentenced in absentia to death and life imprisonment for terrorist offences by an Algerian court, appealed his deportation in 2006.