Produced by processing castor beans, ricin is 6,000 times more lethal than cyanide and has no known antidote
During the raid, cops found a large number of castor seeds from which ricin is made. Pic/AFP
A Tunisian man arrested in Germany in possession of the deadly poison ricin and bomb-making material was planning a biological attack, the national police chief said yesterday.
"Very concrete preparations had been made for an act with a ... biological bomb, which is a first for Germany," Holger Muench, head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, told public broadcaster ARD. German police commandos on June 12 stormed the Cologne apartment of the 29-year-old Tunisian migrant identified as Sief Allah and discovered "toxic substances" that turned out to be ricin.
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Produced by processing castor beans, ricin is 6,000 times more lethal than cyanide and has no known antidote. German news weekly Der Spiegel has reported the man was thought to have been following instructions disseminated by the Islamic State group on how to build a bomb containing ricin.
Prosecutors have charged that he was "strongly suspected of intentionally manufacturing biological weapons", but it remained unclear whether he was actively plotting an attack.
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