Scientists tighten security over germ terror threat

[spindrifter]

The Times January 25, 2007

Britain’s laboratories have been ordered to strengthen security on stocks of more than 100 deadly viruses and bacteria after an MI5 warning that Islamic terrorists are training in germ warfare. The biological agents include polio, rabies, tuberculosis and avian flu. Food poisoning bacteria such as E. coli and the sources of a number of rare tropical and Middle Eastern illnesses are also included.

Scientists and laboratory staff in universities, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies who deal with agents will have to be vetted by police, and their laboratories will be checked by government safety inspectors. Stock will have to be regularly audited. The crackdown comes after MI5 privately warned the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that al-Qaeda was actively recruiting scientists. Extremist groups are known to have targeted students, offering to fund courses in return for using their newly acquired expertise.

Last November Dame Eliza Man-ningham-Buller, the Director-General of MI5, gave warning that terror attacks in Britain could involve weapons of mass destruction.

She said that terrorists were seeking the means to mount a range of attacks using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear devices. “We know that the aspiration is there, we know attempts to gather materials are there, we know that attempts to gather technologies are there,” she said.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2564774,00.html