Global Security Newswire

Law enforcement agencies around the world must prepare to deal with an act of biological terrorism, the head of Interpol said Monday (see GSN, Dec. 6, 2006).

"I have no doubt that the threat of bioterrorism is real and that we need to do more to prepare countries," Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said in a press release, issued during a bioterrorism prevention workshop in Oman.

Given the recent use of chlorine as a weapon by Iraqi insurgents (see GSN, March 20), "it is not difficult to imagine these attacks being extended from chemical to biological," Noble told the Gulf News newspaper, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

Noble also noted al-Qaeda training materials and interrogations of operatives that indicated efforts by terrorist groups to develop and use biological weapons.

"Nobody really knows when al-Qaeda will strike with chemical or biological weapons, but it is just a matter of time before the terrorists believe they are ready," he said.

The three-day workshop was intended to provide guidance on bioterrorism prevention from science and legal experts to top law enforcement officials from the Middle East (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy release, March 20).