Posted on 02/10/2008 8:33:02 PM PST by BGHater
Thallium has been described as an ideal assassin's tool
The UK government has flown antidote medicine to the Middle East after some Iraqis became seriously ill from eating cakes laced with the poison thallium.
Two of the victims, both children, died after eating cake delivered to a military club in Baghdad.
Others are being treated in hospital in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
It is the first time the deadly toxin has been used since the downfall of Saddam Hussein, whose regime used it to kill its opponents.
At least two of the poison victims, the secretary of the Iraqi air force club and his daughter, are critically ill in Amman.
They and half-a-dozen other patients suffering from thallium poisoning were flown from Baghdad to Amman as the necessary treatments and antidotes were not available in Iraq.
Britain responded to a request for help from the World Health Organization and medication was flown out.
Lethal poison
Thallium is a lethal poison much used by Saddam Hussein's regime against its opponents. It has not surfaced since his overthrow.
It is an ideal assassin's tool, being tasteless and easy to administer, and its effects take some time to appear.
It then causes a lingering and painful death. An antidote known as Prussian Blue can be effective if taken quickly.
An investigation is under way in Baghdad, but the affair remains shrouded in mystery. The manager of the air force club told the BBC he believed it was carried out by conspirators with a grudge against the club's administration.
In what appeared to be a goodwill gesture, a former official delivered two cakes laced with thallium.
They were taken home by two officials and eaten by their families, who all fell ill.
Terrible. Where did it come from?
Soon to be a former person.
So this was just your average everyday Iraqi disagreement, not jihadi terrorism.
I remember the stories of thallium poisoning during the Saddam years. Gruesome. I believe it began with the KGB, who used it on particularly obstreperous exiled dissidents they wanted to make an example of. That and ricin.
Good Grief
Sorry, typo. Please correct date of article to 09 Feb 2008.
Dam already Feb and I still don’t know what year it is.
Guess the “former official” had worked in Saddam’s department of dissident suppression.
Guess the “former official” had worked in Saddam’s department of dissident suppression and had some party favors left over.
Satan? Marduk?
BTTT
Humans refined the thallium. Beasts used it.
Saddam’s leftovers (both the thallium and the “former official”).
~PING!
This guy looks like he hasn’t had an oil change in fifty thousand miles!
That is possible. For it to be hidden this long and then used in such an organized fashion makes it a bit less probable.
You may be right, an maybe not. "Former Offical" indicates he was probably Sunni. The jihadi's have been allied most closely with Sunni Iraqi factions....until recently when a large number of Sunni warlords have switched to backing the coalition against al Qaeda in Iraq. But this does not mean every Sunni has switched sides.
He loved hussein didn’t he?
Among the distinctive effects of thallium poisoning are loss of hair (which led it to its initial use as a depilatory before its toxicity was properly appreciated) and damage to peripheral nerves (victims may experience a sensation of walking on hot coals). Thallium was once an effective murder weapon before its effects became understood, and an antidote (prussian blue) discovered.
source: en.wikipedia.org
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