Seven men questioned over deadly ricin find

BRITISH anti-terrorist police hunting for a potential cache of deadly ricin yesterday said they had arrested another man after traces of the poison were found in a north London apartment.

Anti-terrorist police are now questioning seven men after seizing the poison which some experts have linked to al-Qaida in raids on Sunday.

At least six of the suspects are of North African origin.

"The arrest is part of ongoing inquiries by the anti-terrorist branch and is linked to Sunday's arrests," a London police spokesman said, adding no further information would be released.

One security source said the first six men were Algerians whose likely intention was to infect people using a poisoned cream: a chilling scenario that would unleash widespread fear rather than mass deaths.

"My best guess is that they were planning something like the anthrax incidents in the United States," Michael Yardley, a historian of terrorism, said.

Ricin, one of the deadliest naturally occurring poisons, is derived from castor plant beans, which are grown worldwide to produce castor oil.

The government made it clear the arrests showed rogue groups were bent on hurting the West.

"What this demonstrates is that there is a threat from international terrorism," said a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair "There is a mass of intelligence passing across ministers' desks."

Police fear the traces of ricin and equipment they found in a Victorian terraced flat above an innocuous pharmacy could be just the tip of the iceberg.

Security sources said large amounts of the poison could still be in the hands of extremists in Britain or abroad, while doctors around the country were on alert for the flu-like symptoms linked to ricin.

As police only found a small amount of the poison, officers were on an urgent hunt for any other secret stockpiles that might be used to sow terror. Ricin, developed during World War II by the United States and its allies, has a long history of use in espionage, but experts say it is hard to use as an agent of mass death.

Its best known victim was Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, assassinated by a jab to the leg with a

poison-tipped umbrella in London in 1978.

He died a few days later.