Feedback | 30 April 2005

Deadly recipes

Andrew Gilligan takes a characteristically certain view on what the headline describes as ‘Ricin certainties’ (23 April). Mark Easton researched the background to the trial over several months, travelling across Europe and pressing reluctant police and intelligence officials to talk. The BBC also attended every single day of the court hearings. Mark’s report was based on that experience and his own judgment of the risks posed by the failed plot to make and use ricin. We cannot be sure that Mohammed Meguerba wasn’t maltreated, but his extraordinarily detailed confession led police to the Wood Green flat and the arrest of Bourgass.

Andrew mocks the possible impact of a ricin attack and suggests that Bourgass’s intention to put nicotine on car door handles was relatively harmless. But the recipe found in the Wood Green flat was tested by scientists at Porton Down who confirmed that it was viable and, produced correctly, could cause ‘coma, cardiac arrest, respiratory paralysis and death’. Similarly, the scientists who tested Bourgass’s kitchen recipe for ricin found that it was potentially just as lethal as anything that could be made using laboratory equipment.

Yes, we must guard against hysterical over-reaction that risks our long-established human rights and be alert to the political misuse of the threat from terrorism. But we cannot make sensible judgments about the need for control orders, identity cards or concrete barriers unless we are prepared to assess with open minds the risk of a terrorist attack.

BBC journalism can hardly be accused of not reporting the full range of opinion surrounding these issues. For example, we have closely followed the national debate surrounding the foreign terrorist suspects detained without trial and the fate of the British subjects detained at Guantanamo Bay.