Ricin ( RY-sin) is a lectin (a carbohydrate-binding protein) and a highly potent toxin produced in the seeds of the castor oil plant, Ricinus communis. The median lethal dose (LD50) of ricin for mice is around 22 micrograms per kilogram of body weight via intraperitoneal injection. Oral exposure to ricin is far less toxic. An estimated lethal oral dose in humans is approximately one milligram per kilogram of body weight.
Georgi Ivanov Markov was a Bulgarian dissident writer. He originally worked as a novelist, screenwriter and playwright in his native country, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, until his defection in 1969. After relocating to London, he worked as a broadcaster and journalist for the BBC World Service, the US-funded Radio Free Europe and West Germany's Deutsche Welle. Markov used such forums to conduct a campaign of sarcastic criticism against the incumbent Bulgarian-Soviet regime, which, according to his wife at the time he died, eventually became "vitriolic" and included "really smearing mud on the people in the inner circles."
Belaïd Abrika is a professor of economics at the Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou. He has become one of the best-known modern Kabyles through his role as a leader and spokesperson of the Arouch protest movement in the region of Kabylie in Algeria.
A Bulgarian umbrella is an umbrella with a hidden pneumatic mechanism which injects a small poisonous pellet containing ricin. It has a hollowed stalk in which the pellet neatly sits.
The al-Abud Network is a former insurgent group who was operating within Iraq during the Iraq War. First reported in the "Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD", the group is alleged to have attempted to acquire chemical weapons for use in fighting against Coalition Forces.
The Wood Green ricin plot was an alleged bioterrorism plot to attack the London Underground with ricin poison. The Metropolitan Police Service arrested six suspects on 5 January 2003, with one more arrested two days later.
Casey Cutler was arrested on 6 June 2005, in Arizona, after sparking a full terrorism investigation and raid over his attempts to extract ricin from castor oil. Ricin cannot be made from castor oil. The recipe requires castor beans. It can be made using a recipe Cutler had downloaded from the Internet.
Taking Liberties is a British documentary film about the erosion of civil liberties in the United Kingdom and increase of surveillance under the government of Tony Blair. It was released in the UK on 8 June 2007.
The 2003 ricin letters were two ricin-laden letters found on two occasions between October and November 2003. One letter was mailed to the White House and intercepted at a processing facility; another was discovered with no address in South Carolina. A February 2004 ricin incident at the Dirksen Senate Office Building was initially connected to the 2003 letters as well.
The Pankisi Gorge crisis was a spillover of the Second Chechen War, with military dimension in Georgia early in the 2000s. Georgia was pressured by Russia and the United States to repress the threats of Al-Qaeda in the Pankisi Gorge.
Mustapha Salma Ould Sidi Mouloud is a former police chief of the Polisario Front, and political dissident.
DC Stephen Robin Oake, was a police officer serving as an anti-terrorism detective with Greater Manchester Police in the United Kingdom who was murdered while attempting to arrest a suspected terrorist in Manchester on 14 January 2003.
Kamel Daoudi is a French-Algerian convicted for plotting to blow up a US embassy in Paris in June 2001, who was later deported from London by the UK Border Agency. He pleaded guilty in a French court after his deportation and was sentenced to nine years in jail. He has been consequently stripped of French citizenship and the French government tried to deport him to Algeria, which was refused by the European Court of Human Rights.
Slimane Khalfaoui was a French-Algerian terrorist convicted of the Strasbourg Cathedral bombing plot in 2004 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was married to a French-Muslim woman during his arrest.
Shannon Guess Richardson is an American convicted felon and former actress. She worked in television and film roles, including The Walking Dead, but is best known for sending ricin-laced letters to U.S. President Barack Obama and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, while attempting to frame her husband. She was convicted and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment in July 2014.
Thomas Lewis Lavy was an American farmer who attempted to cross the Canada–US border into Canada from Alaska with several firearms, ricin toxin, and $89,000 in cash in 1993. He was turned away at the border, and the toxin impounded. Lavy claimed at the time that the ricin was to poison the coyotes on his farm. More than two years later he was arrested by the FBI on terrorism charges relating to the border incident, and Lavy hanged himself in his jail cell four days later.
On April 15, 2013, an envelope that preliminarily tested positive for ricin, a highly toxic protein, was intercepted at the US Capitol's off-site mail facility in Washington, D.C. According to reports, the envelope was addressed to the office of Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker. On April 17, 2013, an envelope addressed to President of the United States Barack Obama preliminarily tested positive for ricin.
The 2018 Cologne terrorist plot was foiled when, on 13 June 2018, police arrested Sief Allah H. in Cologne as he was manufacturing an explosive device which incorporated the highly toxic substance ricin. He was arrested for having breached the Kriegswaffenkontrollgesetz.
Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, was involved in numerous security incidents, including assassination threats and attempts. The first known attempt occurred before Trump was the official Republican nominee, at a campaign rally during the 2016 presidential election.
