Menad Benchellali, thin and bearded, was known among his Arab friends as "the chemist" because of the special skills he learned at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. When he returned to his native France in 2001, according to investigators, he set up a laboratory in his parents' spare bedroom and began to manufacture ricin, one of the deadliest known substances.
Working at night with windows open to dissipate fumes from the process, he blended ingredients in a coffee decanter and spooned the doughy mixture onto newspapers to dry. The final product was a white power that Benchellali stored in small glass flasks and old jars of Nivea skin cream -- to be used, as he later told police, "in the event I became involved in the jihad."
Today, exactly how many jars of ricin the 29-year-old Benchellali may have produced -- and their whereabouts -- is an urgent question for European governments facing a wave of terrorist attacks and threats. Last year, investigators say, similar containers turned up in Britain, in the possession of North Africans who were allegedly planning an attack. At least one other jar is known to be missing, and French investigators suspect that still others exist.
The story of Benchellali's laboratory offers a glimpse into a secret world of suspected terrorists and their quest for biological and chemical weapons. According to European investigators, a string of incidents in recent months points to a particular interest in ricin, the highly lethal toxin that comes from castor beans.
So far, no poison attacks by al Qaeda-related groups have been carried out, and many experts say they believe that terrorist groups still haven't mastered the skills needed to make an effective weapon. But they clearly are trying. Lacking facilities for making advanced chemical or biological arms, investigators say these groups are seeking toxins that can be easily bought, stolen or manufactured in an ordinary kitchen using common ingredients.
Al Qaeda's interest in biological and chemical arms is well documented, although the group's ability to produce such weapons is believed to have been crippled by the loss of its sanctuary in Afghanistan. Invading U.S. forces in 2001 discovered and destroyed two production centers that were preparing to manufacture cyanide and the botulinum and salmonella toxins, and possibly anthrax.
Since then, investigators believe al Qaeda has become more diffuse, transforming itself into a loose-knit collection of underground cells. They say that Benchellali, who has been in prison in France since December 2002, may be one of hundreds of specially trained graduates of al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan who have shared their skills with a new generation of recruits.
"Biological and chemical weapons are more important than ever to al Qaeda, but the new emphasis is on the simple and the practical," said Roland Jacquard, a French terrorism expert and author of a forthcoming book, "The Third Generation of al Qaeda," which describes the evolution in tactics. "This is the kind of terrorism that interested Benchellali's group. If they had been allowed to continue, they probably would have succeeded."
In the past 21/2 years, ricin-making equipment or traces of the toxin have been discovered during police raids on al Qaeda-affiliated cells in Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Georgia and Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. In each case, police also found manuals or papers containing detailed instructions for making and using ricin.
CIA Director George J. Tenet, in testimony in March before the U.S. commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, cited the manuals in warning of a "heightened risk of poison attacks" in the near future. "Extremists have widely disseminated instructions for a chemical weapon using common materials that could cause large numbers of casualties in a crowded, enclosed area," Tenet said.
Ricin is not well suited for a weapon of mass destruction. At least a half-dozen countries, including the United States and Iraq, have sought to weaponize ricin and failed. The toxin's jumbo-sized molecules are heavy and tend to clump together, and bioweapons scientists found they needed tons of ricin to deliver lethal doses to a battlefield.
For would-be terrorists, however, ricin is appealing for a single reason: accessibility.
"The technology for making it is low enough that literally any crank working in his basement can create a ricin preparation of some sort," said Jonathan Tucker, a biological weapons expert with the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "You can't do that as easily with anthrax."
The raw materials for ricin are cheap. The toxin naturally exists in castor beans, which grow wild in many parts of the world, including the United States, where the plants are prized by gardeners and landscapers as an ornamental shrub. Brazil, China and India grow industrial quantities of the colorful, plump beans to make castor oil, which is used in products ranging from laxatives and shampoos to lubricating oils. A single castor bean, if chewed, contains enough ricin to kill a child. Al Qaeda's interest in ricin dates to at least the late 1990s. Two terrorism manuals seized from al Qaeda operatives in several locations contain detailed instructions on making and using the toxin. One was found by British journalists in November 2001 at a deserted al Qaeda safe house in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Another was titled, "The Encyclopedia of Jihad," and commends ricin as one of the "poisons that the holy warrior can prepare and use without endangering his health."
Many of the details of Benchellali's ricin experiments -- including how much he made and how he intended to use it -- remain unknown. But after a year-long probe, French investigators have pieced together a chronology of his activities. This account is based on interviews with investigators, a family member, neighbors and French journalists, and the transcripts of police interrogations of Benchellali.
The son of an Algerian-born Muslim cleric, Benchellali grew up in a gritty Lyon suburb, Les Minguettes, notable for its thickets of towering public housing complexes and 30-percent unemployment rate. As a boy, he witnessed his father's confrontations with the French government over laws banning Islamic head coverings for school girls. Although he developed a fondness for nice cars and clothes, he saw few opportunities for obtaining them, or for gaining full acceptance as a Muslim and Arab in France, according to family acquaintances.
"As an Arab living here, the only area of society where you are truly accepted is religion," said Mustapha Kessous, a Lyon journalist and radio talk-show host who has written extensively about the Benchellali family and Lyon's immigrant community. "To anyone meeting you on the street, you are a Muslim and an Arab first, not a Frenchman."
Police are uncertain how Benchellali first connected with al Qaeda. In the late 1990s, according to U.S. and French intelligence officials, he traveled to Afghanistan to train in one of several camps that the group established for foreign recruits. On one of his later trips he was accompanied by his younger brother Mourad, who eventually was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and is now being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
U.S. officials believe Menad Benchellali may have received advanced training at al Qaeda's Derunta camp, near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. The camp housed one of al Qaeda's labs and a school for a select group of recruits who studied the use of toxic chemicals and biological toxins, including ricin, U.S. intelligence sources say.
The instructors included at least two scientists: Yazid Sufaat, a U.S.-trained biochemist who is now in custody in Malaysia, and a Pakistani microbiologist who U.S. officials have declined to name. At Derunta, U.S. forces discovered castor oil and equipment for making ricin. "There is a lot of evidence of crude attempts to produce ricin," at Derunta, said a U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition he not be identified by name.
After al Qaeda lost Afghan camps to invading U.S. forces in late 2001, Benchellali's chemical training shifted to the Pankisi Gorge, a lawless area in Georgia that borders Chechnya, the separatist republic in southern Russia, French authorities say. The existence of makeshift laboratories and training camps in the mountainous region has been documented by the Georgian government, which moved to close the camps early last year. Benchellali told police he had planned to join the Chechen rebels but was thwarted in his attempts to cross into Russia. He decided instead to return to France, taking with him new skills and a network of contacts spanning most of Western Europe.
The apartment in suburban Lyon to which Benchellali returned two years ago is small but tidy, its thin green carpet and modest furnishings showing meticulous care. The dominant feature is a wall-length bookshelf filled with handsome brown leather volumes with titles in gold Arabic script. A young girl who answered the door recently explained that the dwelling had been nearly empty for weeks: Since early January, three members of the family -- both parents and a brother -- have been jailed pending trial on charges they aided Menad Benchellali's attempts to make ricin.
The lab was located in a spare bedroom that doubled by day as a sewing room. French police say Benchellali, fresh from training camp in the Pankisi Gorge, would lock himself in the room and work through the night on his mysterious projects, the nature of which he kept to himself. In fact, French police say, he was experimenting with a variation of one of the recipes he learned abroad: a ricin concoction laced with the toxin that causes botulism. While extremely toxic, ricin can be extracted using rudimentary kitchen equipment and can be handled without danger if a person takes basic precautions.
Family members acknowledged to police that they sometimes ran errands for Benchellali, picking up lab equipment and bottles of acetone from a local market. Acetone is used in the processing of the castor beans. "Menad would tell me what he needed, and I would make a list," one of his sisters told police, according to a transcript of her interrogation, which was relayed by a French investigator.
Benchellali's mother, Hafsa, told police she became concerned after finding strange potions and liquids scattered around her sewing room following one of her son's all-night sessions. But when she confronted her son, he warned her to stay away. "He said it was dangerous," the woman said, according to the transcript, "and it was better if I didn't know what he was doing."
The experiments ended abruptly in December 2002 when Benchellali was arrested along with three others in connection with an alleged plot to bomb the Russian Embassy in Paris with conventional explosives. Months passed before terrorism investigators became fully aware of the ricin experiments and the extent of Benchellali's possible ties with al Qaeda's biological and chemical programs abroad. On Jan. 10, 2004, police raided the family's apartment in a search for weapons and equipment, but by then any traces of ricin that might have existed had vanished, French officials said.
Relatives and neighbors contend that the government's claims about Benchellali are wildly exaggerated. Jacques Debray, a lawyer representing the Benchellali family, said he believed that France's arrest of the parents was partly a pressure tactic to extract confessions -- including possible new leads to assist the U.S. government in its prosecution of Mourad Benchellali, the son held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. "Such information could clearly improve relations with the United States," Debray said.
French terrorism officials, however, are convinced that the arrests halted a terrorist attack and likely saved lives -- and not just in France. But the details of such plans for an attack are not known.
"Members of this group had training in chemical and biological weapons," said a senior French terrorism investigator who spoke on the condition he not be identified by name. "We know they wanted to develop poisons and use them to create panic. It was to be one tool among many."
In January 2003, prompted by French discoveries in the Benchellali case, British police raided apartments in London, Bournemouth and Manchester and apprehended 13 North African men suspected of ties to al Qaeda and an affiliated terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam. In one of the London apartments authorities found castor beans, traces of ricin and equipment for making the toxin. Later that month, Spanish police arrested 16 North Africans and seized additional equipment, chemicals and false passports.
French officials believe the Spanish, British and French cells were communicating with one another and coordinating their activities, especially those related to obtaining toxins and poisons. Members of all three groups had spent time at the same Pankisi Gorge camp. Yet, more than a year after Benchellali's arrest, European and U.S. counterterrorism officials are not convinced that all members of the network have been identified.
The Bush administration has said it believes more than 100 militants were part of the same cluster of terrorist cells that allegedly included Benchellali. It also contends that members of the network took orders from Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Palestinian terrorist believed to have organized recent suicide bombings in Iraq. While other governments are less certain about the command structure, there is wide agreement among counterterrorism officials that additional sleeper cells continue to operate in Europe, Asia and possibly North America.
"They are honing their skills and awaiting instructions," said Jacquard, the French terrorism expert. "They make what they want and they raise their own money. Some may not be sophisticated. But they communicate with more professional and trained individuals who are operating under the last orders they received from leaders of al Qaeda."
Terrorism experts say an attack with ricin probably would not cause massive casualties, though it could kill or sicken dozens or even hundreds under the right conditions. Even a small-scale attack could cause panic and disrupt commerce and government services, as was illustrated two months ago when the discovery of ricin traces on a mail-sorting machine shut down Senate office buildings for several days.
"These are toxins that, if released in a enclosed space, could cause extreme harm," said Jeffrey M. Bale, an expert on chemical and biological terrorism at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "There's no doubt that the groups we're seeing today could carry out such an attack. What surprises me is that that they haven't already done so." |
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