The Black Vault - Biological Weapons Plan Foiled

Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network has reportedly been planning to manufacture the biological poison ricin.

The Times reported that plans for nuclear devices were found in premises abandoned by al Qaeda when the Taliban and its allies fled Kabul.

Poison Instructions for making the poison were concealed amid a mass of scattered documents listing formulae for manufacturing explosives, fuses and detonation circuits, the newspaper said.

The documents were found at a gated house in Saraq Panza, Kabul, where two Arab doctors were beaten and killed as they tried to escape on Monday night.

The poison, which was used by Bulgarian secret police to kill the exile Georgi Markov as he walked across London's Waterloo Bridge in 1978, is produced from a toxic protein in castor oil seed.

Toxic agent

One page of the instructions reads: "A certain amount, equal to a strong dose, will be able to kill an adult, and a dose equal to seven seeds will kill a child."

Another page says: "Gloves and face mask are essential for the preparation of ricin. Period of death varies from 3-5 days minimum, 4-14 days maximum."

Ricin, one of the most toxic biological agents, was discovered by UN weapons inspectors in Iraq as part of Saddam Hussein's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in the 1990s.