Russia:  Officials Raise Hostage Death Toll

Without explanation, Russian authorities yesterday said 128 hostages died in the Oct. 26 raid on a Moscow theater — eight more than had previously been reported (see GSN, Nov. 4).

Russia said that 123 hostages had died from the fenatnyl gas used in the raid and officials increased the number of hostages that were shot by the Chechen extremists who held the theater, from two to five.  Officials did not explain when or how the hostages were shot.

The Internet news site Grani reported that 136 hostages had died, but speculated that officials were going to announce the deaths slowly to reduce the fallout from the raid (Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, Nov. 8).

Among the dead civilians were eight foreigners, from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Austria, the United States and the Netherlands, according to the Moscow city prosecutor.

Russian commandos who stormed the theater also killed 41 Chechens, 22 men and 19 women.  Authorities have said it was necessary to kill the extremists to prevent them from detonating more than 100 pounds of explosives that they had set up in the theater, which they captured Oct. 23.

Doctors continue to treat 67 hostages who are still hospitalized from the effects of the gas.  Of those, 26 have been discharged but returned for further care.

Nine Russian Federal Security Service commandos are also hospitalized, most likely from the effects of the gas, said Sergei Goncharov, former leader of the elite unit (Judith Ingram, Associated Press/Boston Globe, Nov. 8).

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International Response:  Geneva Simulates Chemical Attack at Airport

Local officials in Geneva yesterday simulated a terrorist attack involving chemical weapons at the city’s airport to evaluate regional emergency response personnel (see GSN, Sept. 10).

During the exercise — called CAPITO 02 and witnessed by 60 diplomats from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons — a thermos flask containing simulated nerve agent was left in a garbage can near the airport’s check-in terminals, according to Agence France-Presse.

“We use a product which reacts like a sarin gas but it’s not painful,” said Geneva official Marc Zuffa.

Local police arrived to help evacuate the terminal 20 minutes after symptoms were reported, AFP reported.  Within 30 minutes, medical experts suspected that initial symptoms indicated the attack involved a nerve agent.

“Four hours are needed between the moment of the attack and the time the whole plan of action is totally operational,” said Raymond Wicky, deputy commander of the Geneva fire department and head of the exercise.

In total, 200 people participated in the exercise, which caused 14 simulated fatalities (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 7).

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United States I:  New Research Offers Safer Incapacitating Chemicals

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Recent pharmaceutical advances could permit development of drugs much safer than those used by Russian authorities to rescue more than 600 hostages last month, according to a leading expert (see GSN, Nov. 4).

The Russian rescue has been criticized after it became clear that the chemical used to subdue the hostage-takers was responsible for killing up to 118 hostages (see GSN, Nov. 4).

“I think the studies in this area are getting close, [but] we’re not perfect yet,” professor Theodore Stanley, an anesthesiology expert at the University of Utah’s medical school, said.

There are currently drugs that have been researched in the United States and abroad that may be “10 times safer” than what the Russians are believed to have used, an aerosol based on the common anesthetic fentanyl.  Some of the new chemicals are “similar” to fentanyl and some are not, he said.

Stanley and others suspect Russia used either sufentanil or carfentanil, potent agents derived from fentanyl that have also been researched by the U.S. military.

The new drugs are still in the early stages of research and it is not yet clear whether they could be both safe and effective enough to use, he said.

“We haven’t done enough studies yet to know,” he said.

A 1999 U.S. Defense Department document also alluded to promising agents, saying “recent pharmaceutical developments suggest that new approaches to safer chemical immobilizers with improved performance characteristics may be available.”

That document solicited bids for research into promising new agents for use as incapacitants, examining “recent breakthroughs in the pharmacological classes such as anesthetics/analgesics, tranquilizers, hypnotics and neuromuscular blockers.”

Complex Challenge

Parker Ferguson, whose company, Optimetrics, won the contract for the initial phase of the Pentagon research, said major challenges remained to developing an incapacitant both potent enough to be effective and safe enough to use.

“It’s often a tradeoff … It’s a very complex proposition,” he said.

An abstract of his company’s bid for the work said recent studies suggested the existence of “three new agent combinations with potential for meeting user objectives.”

Ferguson would not discuss the results of the work, for which he was the lead researcher.  He said, though, that to his knowledge no one had yet solved the safety-effectiveness problem.

The first phase of the Pentagon program was to analyze “promising new chemical immobilizing agents or combinations of agents.”

The second phase, not yet initiated, would involve “establishing desired performance and operational characteristics with respect to potential scenarios of use.”

A third phase would list various military and domestic law enforcement scenarios for which the technology might be used.

U.S. Rejected Earlier Agent

U.S. researchers for years sought to come up with an agent considered safe enough to use and so far have been unsuccessful, according to experts.

During the 1960s, the U.S. military put a substantial amount of money into developing and weaponizing a delirium-causing agent called BZ.  Those weapons were dismantled and the BZ destroyed, however, and since then the U.S. Army has not reported having any temporarily incapacitating munitions in its arsenal.  

Experts say the U.S. Army became disenchanted with the weapon because of its unpredictability.  A 1969 National Security Council report said BZ was unlikely to be employed because of a “wide range of variability of effects, long onset time, and inefficiency of existing munitions.” An Army history cited the inability to find an agent that would satisfy “practical and political concerns.”  The Chemical Weapons Convention, which entered into force in 1997, restricts BZ. 

Through a program for developing riot control chemicals, dating back to the 1970s, the military conducted research on derivatives of fentanyl — sufentanil and carfentanil — but found they could cause subjects to stop breathing, according to professor Matthew Meselson, co-director of the Harvard Sussex Program on Chemical and Biological Warfare Armament and Arms Limitation.  Subsequent research involved mixing or chasing it with an antidote naloxone to reduce the danger of respiratory failure, he said.

Safety Concerns

Optimetric’s bid on the Pentagon’s 1999 solicitation said previous approaches to developing a safe and reliable immobilizing agent “were deficient in one or more technical aspects such as low safety ratios or inadequate performance characteristics.  This program will lead to a capability that does not currently exist.”

Fentanyl-derived drugs are found to be highly effective at depressing the nervous system, and ideal for the operating room because if administered correctly they cause no lasting health effects.

“It’s one of the safest drugs that anesthesiologists have … If you know how to use it, it’s probably one of the safest drugs you could imagine,” said Stanley.

An important consequence of its use, however, is that it can depress or inhibit respiration, which is acceptable when administered by an anesthesiologist, but potentially fatal in an uncontrolled environment.  The drug is likely to be more dangerous for children than for adults, which could pose a problem when used on a crowd.

Chemicals are already used for riot control, such as pepper spray and tear gas, which temporarily incapacitate through irritation.  Ferguson said such chemicals are not ideal because they have been found to be ineffective on some people.

“If you sprayed Ray Lewis, a middle linebacker from the Baltimore Ravens or someone like a defensive back for the Washington Redskins, they’d probably take your head off,” Ferguson said.

A major part of the difficulty with using common fentanyl-derived products as incapacitants, Ferguson said, is being able to deliver an effective but safe dose to everyone who might come in contact with it. 

For instance, if Russian authorities had used the substance by putting it into the building air vents, he said, “the people underneath or right near the vent might get a lethal dose and others might not.”

Treaty Concerns

Arms control experts say that regardless of their safety, the development and use of nonlethal chemical incapacitants pose a challenge to several international legal norms related to the rules of war.

The U.S. military views developing nonlethal chemical incapacitants in part as a solution for dealing with warfare situations involving innocent civilians.

The National Research Council, part of the National Academies of Sciences, appeared to endorse that view in a preliminary report released this week, first reported by the Los Angeles Times (see GSN, Nov. 5).

The report advocated more research into nonlethal chemicals “in accordance with U.S. treaty obligations in the Chemical Weapons Convention,” and said they had “compelling applications in engine stopping and crowd control that cannot be achieved by other means.”

Mark Wheelis, a University of California-Davis microbiology professor who opposes chemical incapacitant development, said using temporarily incapacitating agents could weaken norms against targeting civilians, and soldiers who are incapacitated and unable to fight.

“The entire justification from the JNLWD [the Pentagon’s Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate] point of view is the military is increasingly engaged in operations where combatants and noncombatants are intermixed,” said Wheelis.

He said soldiers might understandably be tempted in combat to kill temporarily incapacitated adversaries before they regain their senses.

The National Research Council report said weapons that deliver chemical contaminants to a crowd other than riot control agents would likely fail in meeting an international requirements agreed to at the Hague in 1907 requiring distinction between military and civilian targets and unnecessary suffering.

“Perhaps R&D may be able to resolve the issue of discrimination as well as to focus on a legally permissible human effect, such as psychological impairment rather than physiological impairment,” it said.

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Libya:  Germans Probe Illegal Exports to Weapons Site

German prosecutors have begun investigating two former employees of a German company who are suspected of illegally supplying equipment to a Libyan chemical weapons plant, Der Spiegel reported Monday (see GSN, May 8).

The former employees, including the former manager of the company, are suspected of illegally providing water filtration equipment to the Libyan al-Rabitah plant, which is believed to have produced nerve gas agents until 1990.  The German Federal Export Office approved the export because Libya listed a pharmaceutical plant in Tripoli as the end-user, according to Der Spiegel.  The office said no export to the al-Rabitah plant had been approved.

If the former employees are found to have violated German foreign trade laws, they could be sentenced to up to two years in prison, Der Spiegel reported (Der Spiegel, Nov. 4 in FBIS-WEU, Nov. 4).

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United States II:  Army Restructures Demilitarization Program

U.S. Army officials restructuring the service’s chemical demilitarization efforts might replace program head Mario Fiori, assistant Army secretary for Installations and Environment, the Anniston Star reported yesterday (see GSN, June 14).

Questions over Fiori’s management of the program arose when a series of e-mails leaked to reporters indicated that the Army planned to conduct a public relations campaign against local officials who had criticized the community’s preparedness for a chemical weapons incident, the Star reported.  Fiori is alleged to have created the plan.

If Fiori is replaced, it will be the third time in three years that the Army has changed oversight of the program.  Army Maj. Gen. Claude Bolton and Undersecretary of Defense Pete Aldridge are believed to be likely candidates for Fiori’s replacement, according to the Star.

An Army spokesman denied that there has been no talk of replacing Fiori, but did not say whether the chemical demilitarization program would be shifted to the Army Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Department, which oversaw the program in the past (Jason Landers, Anniston Star, Nov. 5).

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United States:  Panel Urges Pentagon Research for Nonlethal Weapons

The U.S. National Research Council released a preliminary report Monday advocating more research into nonlethal chemicals and citing their “compelling applications in engine stopping and crowd control that cannot be achieved by other means” (see GSN, Nov. 4).

“Terrorists often put themselves in the middle of noncombatants — so how do you deal with that?” said Miriam John, vice president of the California Division of Sandia National Laboratories and chair of the committee that conducted the report.  “You have to have some options to neutralize folks, so you can then sort out the bad guys from the good guys.”

The report, which is expected to be completed this winter, was requested by the U.S. Navy as a step toward using chemicals to defend ships and facilities, the Los Angeles Times reported today.  The Pentagon also hoped for applications in dealing with hostile civilians.

The panel recommended an emphasis on researching the effects and disperal methods of both “calmative” chemical agents and “malodorants.”

The use of chemicals on civilians might violate the Chemical Weapons Convention, some experts noted.

“The panel’s findings will be used by the Pentagon to redouble their chemical weapons development efforts, with potentially disastrous results for arms control,” said Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project, which has been looking into chemical weapons documents.  “Other countries will follow suit, and controls on chemicals could quickly destabilize.”

Mark Wheelis, a professor of microbiology at the University of California-Davis, said that equipment used for nonlethal chemicals could easily be used for lethal chemicals.

“We would make it far more difficult to figure out if other nations have lethal chemical weapons or not,” Wheelis said.  “It’s much easier to hide a lethal chemical weapons program if you have a nonlethal program” (Aaron Zitner, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 5).

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United States:  U.S. Military Studying Nonlethal Chemicals

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military has initiated a plan to research and develop so-called nonlethal chemical agents for a wide range of possible civilian and military purposes, according to a Pentagon document obtained by Global Security Newswire.

Arms control experts say the plan could run afoul of the international Chemical Weapons Convention, to which the United States is a party (see GSN, Oct. 30).

The plan calls for demonstrating the feasibility of a “safe, reliable” chemical immobilizing agent or agents for nonlethal applications in appropriate military missions and law enforcement situations, according to the document, Chemical Immobilizing Agents for Non-lethal Applications, a solicitation for corporate bids to perform the research.

If proven effective and safe, such “incapacitating” agents might be used for a wide range of missions, including peacekeeping, embassy protection, and counterterrorism.

The agents might also be used for common law enforcement purposes ranging from “hostage and barricade situations” to close proximity encounters such as “bar fights and stopped motorists,” the document says.

A first phase of the program for initial research was contracted for in 2000 and has been completed.  The military has not commented on when or if the second of three planned phases might begin.

The program is a concern to some arms control experts, who say it could lead to violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention and more generally undermine the treaty and other international norms.

“I do see as very destabilizing the development of new nonlethal weapons, whether they’re riot control agents or not, being done by the military, for military purposes,” Mark Wheelis, a microbiologist at the University of California at Davis. 

It could “seriously erode the norm against military use of chemicals as weapons,” he said.

Research Contracted

Russian authorities used such an agent last month to incapacitate Chechen hostage-takers and rescue more than 600 hostages.  While knocking out the Chechens, the fentanyl-based agent also killed 118 hostages, authorities said (see related GSN story, today).

Without success so far, the U.S. military and Justice Department for years have sought to develop chemical incapacitants considered sufficiently potent and safe. 

During the 1960s, the U.S. military put a substantial amount of money into developing a delirium-causing agent called BZ.  By the mid-1960s, the U.S. Army had stockpiled and stored in military depots cluster munitions for delivering BZ. 

Those munitions were dismantled and the BZ destroyed according to U.S. government declarations and, according to a 1997 Army history, there were at that time no temporarily incapacitating munitions in the arsenal.  The history cited the inability to find an agent that would satisfy “practical and political concerns.”

Then the military, through a program dating back to the 1970s called Advanced Riot Control Device, conducted research on variants derivative of fentanyl — sufentanil and carfentanil — but found they could cause a halt in respiration in humans.  Subsequent research involved mixing or chasing it with an antidote naloxone to reduce the danger of respiratory failure.

The U.S. Army in May 2000 awarded a contract for the first phase of the plan described in the solicitation to the Michigan company Optimetrics.

Developing a safe chemical incapacitant is “a very, very difficult problem,” said Parker Ferguson, the primary researcher on contract.

“I think the event in Russia is fairly indicative of the problems that one would face in trying to do that,” he said.

Theodore Stanley, an anesthesiology expert at the University of Utah Medical School, said U.S. authorities have hesitated to develop chemical incapacitants in part because they can be controversial to use.

“Think about this, if you knew your government was conducting research and spending a significant amount of money so they could put something in the atmosphere and anesthetize an entire state or city in a minute, you might be upset with that,” he said.

He said, though, that that risk could be outweighed by the benefits.

“If you could do that safely, and you saved that for very special cases, something like this [the Russian crisis], you had that capacity, you were trained and you could handle this, people would pat you on the back and say you saved the day,” he said.

Indication of Scope

Ferguson declined to comment directly on the new research, citing a need to maintain confidentiality.  The Pentagon’s solicitation did provide some indication of the scope of the study and its goals.

If the technology is proven, potential military uses might include “meeting U.S. and NATO objectives in peacekeeping missions; crowd control; embassy protection; rescue missions; and counter-terrorism,” it said.

Potential law enforcement uses by domestic agencies, the solicitation also said, include: hostage and barricade situations; crowd control; close proximity encounters such as, domestic disturbances, bar fights and stopped motorists; halting fleeing felons; and prison riots.

The research would analyze “recent breakthroughs in the pharmacological classes such as anesthetics/analgesics, tranquilizers, hypnotics and neuromuscular blockers.”

“Recent pharmaceutical developments suggest that new approaches to safer chemical immobilizers with improved performance characteristics may be available,” it said.

Concerns Regarding the CWC

Arms control experts say regardless of how safe agents can be made, development and use of such agents by the military could run afoul of the international Chemical Weapons Convention, depending on their intended uses.

Fundamentally, the treaty prohibits using any chemical agents for warfare, while allowing for unspecified law enforcement use, and for riot control situations if the agent has only temporary side effects.

“The convention doesn’t ban chemicals, it bans purposes under which those chemicals are applied,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, project leader on chemical and biological warfare for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 

Experts see the administration’s plan potentially in conflict with the treaty with respect to such military purposes such as peacekeeping, counterterrorism, search and rescue and crowd control.

Wheelis contends the U.S. military has not publicly made the case that using chemical incapacitants for such activities would be legal.

“Not only do you have to show that this is not a means of warfare, you also have to demonstrate that this is law enforcement,” he said.  “My view is the Pentagon has to demonstrate proactively that this is legal.”

Using chemicals under such circumstances, he said, might be allowable if they were specifically authorized as law enforcement activity either by the country where they were used or by the U.N. Security Council.

Potential Conflicts

Two of the potential uses that might pose problems with respect to the treaty are peacekeeping and counterterrorism, said professor Matthew Meselson, co-director of the Harvard Sussex Program on Chemical and Biological Warfare Armament and Arms Limitation noting the treaty expressly forbids chemical weapons use for warfare.

“You could imagine them in various flavors, some of which sound fine and some of which don’t,” he said. 

“In peacekeeping, if it is against an organized armed unit, that definitely would be warfare,” he said.

It is too soon to tell whether the program violates the treaty, Zanders said.  He added, though, another part of the document could point to a potential treaty breach.

The document said the Pentagon’s Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate found the technology falls under its broad core mission area of “incapacitating personnel” and could be used for “clearing of facilities” and “area denial.”

“These are some of the core purposes of using chemicals in military warfare,” he said.

There is little publicly available information explaining how the U.S. military views the constraints of the treaty on the use of chemical incapacitants.  A slideshow summarizing a Navy assessment presented in April 2001, however, suggested the Navy considers such agents allowable if incapacitation is temporary, for riot control in military operations other than war, and if it discriminates between civilians and combatants.

The slideshow, presented by a Marine Corps attorney-advisor, suggested chemicals might also be used “defensively,” such as against rioting prisoners, in situations where civilians are used as shields, for search and rescue, and for “rear areas security.”

The Pentagon solicitation itself tacitly acknowledged use of the technologies could pose a challenge to the requirements of the convention.

The second phase of the program requires research to “determine implications of the Chemical Warfare Convention (CWC) for proposed scenarios of use” of the chosen material and “select optimum scenario(s) of use.”

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Russia:  Moscow Death Toll Rises as Chechen Threatens More Attacks

The civilian death toll from the Moscow theater siege rose to 120 as a woman died of acute cardiac insufficiency, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Nov. 1).  Only two of the dead were killed by their captors, with the remaining 118 victims succumbing to the effects of the anesthetic chemical pumped into the theater by Russian authorities.

Four children are among the 148 freed hostages who remain hospitalized as of Monday (Interfax/Associated Press, Nov. 4).

Russian authorities freed hundreds of hostages and killed 50 Chechen extremists when they retook the theater Oct. 26, but experts have said that the Russians also caused civilian fatalities with “a huge overdose” of fentanyl, the London Independent reported.  The fentanyl was pumped through the theater’s ventilation system to incapacitate the Chechens.

Meanwhile, a Chechen military leader has claimed responsibility for the raid and announced that more devastating attacks will follow.

“The next time those who come won’t make any demands, won’t take any hostages,” Shamil Basayev said.  The main goal will be to destroy the enemy and exact maximum damage” (Fred Weir, Independent, Nov. 3).

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