(Sydney Morning Herald) Paul McGeough - When Dr. Mohammed Frah - director of research and development at Falluja, one of the remote factories where the United States claims Saddam Hussein could be making chemical and biological weapons - was asked if he had worked on any of Saddam's chemical weapons programs, he answered: "In the early 1980s I worked for five years on the chemical and biological programs at Al-Muthanna." This is the name of a critical center in Saddam's weapons program - a huge pesticide complex that produced thousands of tons of deadly chemical agents - including sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard - for weapons of mass destruction. The plant, 50 kilometers north of Falluja, was partly demolished by bombs during the 1991 Gulf War, but not before most of its stockpiles had been trucked out. United Nations inspection teams finished its demolition in 1994. It soon emerged that Dr. Frah was not the only Al-Muthanna alumnus at Falluja. The manager of the Falluja plant, Dr. Jamal Hider Hassan, said he had spent much of his career there, and when asked how many of his staff of 200 might also have served at Al-Muthanna, he said: "About 80 per cent." The tour ended abruptly minutes after Dr. Frah admitted to his years at Al-Muthanna.
2002-08-30 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive