Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

RIYADH BOMBINGS • 605The most publicized case of alleged preparation or procurementof ricin by terrorists for use as a weapon of mass destruction was thecase involving police raids in the Wood Green district of London inwhich British police arrested 23 suspects of North African origin andpurported al Qa’eda connections during 5–20 January 2003 for a plotto manufacture and deploy ricin in an attack on the London Underground.In the course of a raid on 14 January 2003, one of the suspectsbeing arrested, Kamal Bourgass, knifed and killed Detective ConstableStephen Oake. Most of those arrested were released, and on 8 April2005 Kamel Bourgass was the only person convicted out of the fivecharged with conspiracy to use ricin as a terrorist weapon; he receiveda 17-year sentence in addition to the life sentence upon his convictionon 30 June 2004 for the murder of Stephen Oake. In fact, none of thedefendants had actual ricin in their possession, although Bourgass hada recipe for manufacturing ricin. Another possible terrorist attempt touse ricin came to light on 3 February 2004 when tests revealed thepresence of ricin on mail addressed to the White House and to the thenSenate majority leader, Bill Frist, but the concentrations of ricin in themailed items were too low to be lethal or even harmful.RIYADH BOMBINGS. There have been at least three terrorist bombingsagainst Saudi and U.S. targets in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, believedto have been the work of al Qa’eda. The first was the Riyadh SaudiNational Guard-U.S. Training Center bombing of 13 November1995. The second was a string of suicide bombings on 12 May 2003against Riyadh residential compounds housing Western contractworkers. The third was the 8 November 2003 suicide truck bombingof the Muhaya residential complex in Riyadh.On 13 November 1995 two powerful bombs detonated one afterthe other at the U.S. military training center in the center of Riyadh,known as the Office of the Program Manager/Saudi Arabian Nationalguard (OPM/SANG), killing four U.S. federal civilian employees,one U.S. service member, and two employees of the Indian government,and injuring another 60 people. Three groups claimed credit forthe attack, including a so-called Movement for Islamic Change.The primary bomb had consisted of between 150 and 225 pounds ofhigh explosives set in a van parked in front of the OPM/SANG office.A secondary bomb exploded nearby. This was the first terrorist attackon a U.S. military installation in Saudi Arabia, although terrorists had