Armies of Liberation

Considering the established nexus among many groups and individuals including Hamas and Hezbollah. which have offices in Yemen, the recently released sons of a leading JI organizer, the Iraqi Muslim Scholars leader in town for a visit, the nephew of Saddam who is directing the Iraqi insurgency whose whereabouts in Yemen are unknown, the increasing strength and funding of the Baathists, the established presence of the Aden Abyan Islamic Army, oh yes, and al-Qaeda, the fact that this woman is unemployed and in Yemen is rather funky to say the least.

YN: Dr. Rihab Taha, Nicknamed “Dr Germ” by UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, is currently in Sana’a, arriving last week with her 10 years old daughter. Taha, one of the top scientists in Iraqi biological weapons programs (released from prison by the Americans in December 2005 alongside her fellow woman colleague Huda Amasah “Dr. Anthrax”) failed to find a job in Sana’a. Indepndent Nab News said that Rihab had applied for several teaching jobs in private universities but was not accepted by any.

She applied also to the University of Sana’a last Saturday, as a last chance to make a living, although she was preferring private institutions to avoid any possible “commitments” that come out of working with governmental bodies.

According to the news service, authorities did not care for Rihab’s presence nor was she contacted by any official body despite her distinguished academic credentials.

Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi (b. 1957), is a microbiologist a graduate of the University of Baghdad, Taha received her Ph.D in plant toxins from the University of East Anglia’s School of Biological Sciences in Norwich , England, which she attended from 1980 to 1984.

At the time, Dr Taha was reported to have ordered – and received – biological specimens from US companies. Dr Taha worked on biological weapons development for seven years, until 1995.

She condemned the weapons inspections process introduced by the UN in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War and defended Iraqi scientists’ right to refuse to co-operate.

Weapons inspectors who met her described her as difficult and dour.

Surrendered

Dr Taha admitted producing germ warfare agents, but said they had been destroyed, according to reports.

Despite her alleged involvement in illegal weapons development, Dr Taha was not on the US list of 55 most wanted Iraqi officials unlike her colleague Huda Amash (Dr. Anthrax).

The US still sought her capture, hoping she could lead them to alleged concealed weapons of mass destruction. In April 2003, US forces raided the home she shared with her husband, Gen Amer Mohammad Rashid, Saddam Hussein’s former oil minister, but failed to find her.

Dr Taha surrendered in May 2003, after negotiating terms with the US-led coalition.

Taha first rose to prominence in the Western media after being named in a 2003 British intelligence dossier, released to the public by Prime Minister Tony Blair on Iraq’s biological, chemical and nuclear capability. The dossier alleged that Taha had played a leading role in the manufacture of anthrax and other biological agents.
It was this dossier that triggered the chain of events that led to the death of British UN weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly who was accused of telling a BBC reporter that some of the intelligence had been manipulated, and the subsequent Hutton Inquiry into his death.

In 1997, Saddam Hussein awarded Taha a medal of scientific achievement and, prior to the 2003 war on Iraq broadcasts were aired showing Taha and Saddam sitting next to each other. On May 12 2003 , the U.S. government announced that Taha had surrendered to coalition forces. On or around December 18 , 2005 , Taha was among over
20 detainees found by an American-Iraqi review board to pose no current security threat and released without charge

On March 28 , 2005 , the Associated Press reported that Taha has explained the 1,800 gallon discrepancy between the amount of anthrax the UN knew she had manufactured, and the amount she admitted to destroying. The missing anthrax was one of the stated reasons for the Iraq war and was emphasized by then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell during his February 2003 speech to the Security Council . However, according to an Iraq Survey Group report published on October 6 2004 , Taha has told American investigators that she and her colleagues dumped the missing anthrax near the gates of one of Saddam’s palaces in April 1991, but were afraid to admit to this for fear of incurring Saddam’s wrath. The Iraqi biologists therefore told the UN weapons inspectors that the missing anthrax had never existed.

Taha is married to the British-educated General Dr. Amer Mohammad Rashid al-Ubaidi, the former Iraqi oil minister and director of Iraq’s Military Industrial Corporation, which was responsible for Saddam’s advanced weapons programs. Taha met General Rashid, who has a Ph.D in engineering from the University of Birmingham in England, when they were both invited to New York for a meeting with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1993. At the time, Taha was in her late 30s, unmarried and without children, a highly unusual situation for an Arab woman. Already married with a six-year-old son, General Rashid took Taha as his second wife when they returned to Baghdad.

Although Taha told her fellow students at Norwich that she wanted to return to Iraq to teach biology, she went instead to work for Iraq’s germ warfare program. In 1985, she worked in the al-Muthanna chemical plant near Baghdad , and later became chief production officer in al-Hakam/al-Hakum, Iraq’s top-secret biological-warfare facility at the time.

During several visits to Iraq by United Nations Special Committee (UNSCOM), set up after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to inspect Iraqi weapons facilities,weapons inspectors were told by Taha that al-Hakam was a chicken-feed plant. “There were a few things that were peculiar about this animal-feed production plant,” Charles Duelfer, UNSCOM’s deputy executive chairman, later told reporters, “beginning with the extensive air defenses surrounding it.”

According to the 1999 DIA report, the normally mild-mannered Taha exploded into violent rages when questioned about al-Hakam, shouting, screaming and, on one occasion, storming out of the room, before returning and smashing a chair.

However, in 1995, UNSCOM’s principal weapons inspector Dr. Rod Barton from Australia showed Taha documents obtained by UNSCOM from the Israeli regime that showed the Iraqi government had just purchased 10 tons of growth media from a British company called Oxoid. Growth media is a mixture of sugar, proteins and minerals that allows microscopic life to grow; it is used in hospitals, where swabs from patients are placed in dishes containing growth media for diagnostic purposes. Iraq’s hospital consumption of growth media was just 200 kg a year; yet in 1988, Iraq imported 39 tons of it.

Shown this evidence by UNSCOM, Taha admitted to the inspectors that she had grown 19,000 litres of botulism, 8,000 litres of anthrax ; 2,000 litres of aflatoxins, which can cause liver cancer; clostridium perfringens , a bacterium that can cause gas gangrene ; and ricin, a castor bean derivative which can kill by inhibiting protein synthesis. She alsoadmitted conducting research into cholera , salmonella, foot and mouth disease , and camel pox, a disease that uses the same growth techniqes as smallpox , but which is safer for researchers to work with. It was because of the discovery of Taha’s work with camel pox that the U.S. and British intelligence services feared Saddam Hussein may have been planning to weaponize the smallpox virus. Iraq had a smallpox outbreak in the 70s and UNSCOM scientists believe the government would have retained contaminated material.

Weaponization of biological agents

The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and UNSCOM catalogued the weaponization by Taha’s team of biological agents. Above, the SIS building photographed from Vauxhall Bridge Road, London

UNSCOM learned that, In August 1990, after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Taha’s team was ordered to set up a program to weaponize the biological agents. By January 1991, a team of 100 scientists and support staff had filled 157 bombs and 16 missile warheads with botulin toxin , and 50 bombs and five missile warheads with anthrax. In an interview with the BBC, Taha denied the Iraqi government had weaponized the bacteria. “We never intended to use it,” she told journalist Jane Corbin of the BBC’s /Panorama/ program. “We never wanted to cause harm or damage to anybody.”

However, UNSCOM found the munitions dumped in a river near al-Hakam. UNSCOM also discovered that Taha’s team had conducted inhalation experiments on donkeys from England and on beagles from Germany. The inspectors seized photographs showing beagles having convulsions inside sealed containers.

The inspectors feared that Taha’s team had experimented on human beings. During one inspection, they discovered two primate-sized inhalation chambers, one measuring 5 cubic metres, though there was no evidence the Iraqis had used large primates in their experiments. According to former weapons inspector Scott Ritter in his 1999 book
Endgame: Solving the Iraq Crisis/, UNSCOM learned that, between July 01 and August 15, 1995, 50 prisoners from the Abu Ghraib prison were transferred to a military post in al-Haditha, in the northwest of Iraq, (Ritter, 1999). Iraqi opposition groups say that scientists sprayed the prisoners with anthrax, though no evidence was produced to support these allegations. During one experiment, the inspectors were told, 12 prisoners were tied to posts while shells loaded with anthrax were blown up nearby. Ritter’s team demanded to see documents from Abu Ghraib prison showing a prisoner count. Ritter writes that they discovered the records for July and August 1995 were missing.
Asked to explain the missing documents, the Iraqi government charged that Ritter was working for the CIA and refused to co-operate further with UNSCOM.

On September 18, 2004 the Tawhid and Jihad (“Oneness of God and Holy War”) Islamist group, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi , kidnapped Americans Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley and British engineer Kenneth Bigley , threatening to kill them if Iraqi women prisoners were not released. Armstrong and Hensley were killed within the first 72 hours, but Bigley was kept alive for three weeks. The only Iraqi women prisoners being held at that time, according to the British government, were Dr. Taha and another woman scientist, the U.S.-educated Dr. Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash , a bio-tech researcher who was on the U.S. list of the 55 most wanted members of Saddam’s regime. It was hoped that the release of these women, who had not been charged with any offense, would trigger the release of Bigley.

Iraq’s prime minister refused to sanction Taha’s release.

On September 22 , 2004, Noori Abdul-Rahim Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Iraqi Justice Ministry, said that Taha would be released soon on bail. He said the decision was not
related to Zarqawi’s demands, but that the government regularly reviews the cases of prominent detainees, and it was decided to release Taha because she had cooperated with the authorities. However, after a statement from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that there would be no negotiations with terrorists, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced that neither Taha nor Ammash would be released in the near future. Kenneth Bigley was beheaded on October 7 , 2004.

Taha’s release

In December 2005, 22 so-called “high-value” prisoners, including Rihab Taha, were released without charge two days after Iraq’s national elections, following over 30 months in confinement. Another woman scientist, Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash nicknamed “Mrs. Anthrax” by the U.S., was also among those released after what the U.S. said was a standardized process of review and an agreement with the interim Iraqi government.