Comprehensive Report

Rihab formed a team and commenced extensive literature
surveys, based initially on the citation indices
of the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
publications of the 1960 and 1970s. The team also
started conducting toxicological investigations. Under
her leadership of the technical elements, the program
moved steadily through a series of discrete phases.
• In 1985, Dr. Rihab ordered reference strains of several
pathogenic organisms from a variety of foreign
sources and began basic research on candidate BW
agents. Al Hindawi became an advisor to her in
1986.
• In 1986, under the guise of work at Baghdad University,
she successfully ordered multiple isolates of
pathogens from the American Type Culture Collection
(ATCC), such as B. anthracis for use in the
early BW agent research effort.
• In 1987, the program moved from Al Muthanna
to Al Salman. The group now under the control of
Ahmad Murtada, DG of the TRC, recruited new
staff and broadened its range of agents. Murtada
was an acolyte of Husayn Kamil and relied on
the Military Industrialization Commission (MIC)
and its Senior Deputy, Dr. ‘Amir Al Sa’adi, for the
weapons aspects of the program. Equipment from
the At Taji SCP Plant was transferred to Al Salman
in August that year.
• Also in 1987, Dr. Rihab and Dr. ‘Amir Al Sa’adi
discussed the possibility of developing a transportable
system for the production of BW agents. She
claims that the idea was largely ‘Amir Al Sa’adi’s
and that she rejected the proposal in favor of a fixed
production site at Al Hakam.
• In 1988, they opened the facility at Al Hakam.
Production of anthrax, botulinum toxin and Clostridium
perfringens started. Weapon development
and testing followed.
• In May 1988, TRC broadened the base of the BW
program by adding a mycologist, Dr. ‘Imad Dhiyab,
with a team that researched fungal toxins, including
trichothecene mycotoxins and later aflatoxin.
The connection, if any, of this work with the earlier
fungal work at Al Salman, is unknown.
• When Iraq tried to expand the production capacity
of Al Hakam by importing three 5 cubic meter fermentation
vessels from the Swiss company Chemap
in 1988, the export license was denied; this, despite
implementing an elaborate deception plan involving
a fake production building at Al Qa’qa’a. However,
fermentors and other equipment were requisitioned
from an Iraqi veterinary vaccine plant at Al Kindi
and transferred to Al Hakam in November 1988.
• In 1989, Dr. Rihab sought to have a spray dryer
manufactured in Iraq for work at Al Hakam. Iraqi
companies were able to fabricate the body of a
dryer but not the other components. In fact, there
was already a dryer at Al Hakam that would, with
some safety modifications, have been suitable for
drying BW agent. This dryer had been transferred
from the At Taji SCP Plant to Al Hakam in 1988.
Nevertheless, she sought from overseas a commercial
dryer that could, without modification, safely
dry anthrax. In 1989, Iraq approached a foreign
manufacturer of dryers with a sample of Bacillus
thuringiensis (Bt) to be dried for biopesticide purposes
as a cover for the true purpose. The company
did not supply Iraq with the special dryer.
By early 1990, Iraq was methodically advancing
toward the acquisition of a BW component to its
arsenal of WMD. Iraq had conducted laboratory and
environmental static and dynamic explosive field tests
of wheat cover smut, aflatoxin, anthrax simulants
(Bacillus subtilis and thuringiensis), botulinum toxin,
Clostridium perfringens and ricin. Following Saddam
Husayn’s speech on 2 April 1990 that identified Israel
as a threat, Husayn Kamil ordered the BW program
to go all out for weaponization. The program took on
a sudden urgency and its direction changed dramatically;
frenetic and convulsive efforts to adapt new
weapons and acquire and expand BW agent production
replaced the years of orderly progress.
By the time of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on 2 August
1990, the BW program had moved into high gear
with the aim of fielding filled weapons as quickly as
possible. Also in August 1990, Al Hakam commenced
production of Clostridium perfringens, the causative
agent of gas gangrene. There is no evidence of the
weaponization of this material and details of its disposal
remain uncertain.
Biological
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