Winds of Change.NET: Brazil's Anthrax Incident: Some Questions

April 29, 2003

Brazil's Anthrax Incident: Some Questions

by Joe Katzman at April 29, 2003 3:40 PM

Given our ongoing coverage of "nukes, bugs and poisons" here at Winds of Change.NET and beyond, yesterday's chilling blog post and analysis concerning the Egyptian sailor discovered dead in Brazil with a suitcase that appears to contain anthrax is worth another look.

First see additional coverage:
* Brazilian police curious about mystery bag
* Bioterrorism suspected... (but the RCMP are downplaying it)

Some details are unclear or conflicting, including the sailor's place of death - though most seem to agree that it was a hotel room in Trombetas.

This is still a breaking story, and even though many reports match up, it's worth scrutinizing closely. Steven Den Beste drew my attention to one odd detail: Brazilian federal police spokesman Fernando Sergio Castro told Reuters that Ibrahim Saved Soliman Ibrahim "had been given the suitcase in Cairo by an unidentified person..."

I'm curious about that detail. Dead men don't talk. I wonder how they knew that so quickly?

I'm pretty sure Ibrahim didn't declare to customs: "Oh, this suitcase? some unidentified person gave it to me in Egypt before I boarded." Nor is it likely that the Egyptians had been tracking him, otherwise the Brazilians would be hopping mad that he was allowed into their country at all. He certainly wouldn't have been left alone in Brazil long enough to contract anthrax and die from it. The suitcase might have been noted as a carry-on in his manifests or declarations, but even then how could they be sure it was the same suitcase? Puzzling.

This detail doesn't make sense, on several levels. The Egyptian government watches Islamists closely, and arrests them often; it makes little sense to believe they would have produced the anthrax there. If it came from an outside source, contacts with Iraqis or Syrians would be at high risk of surveillance these days. Why do this exchange in Egypt at all, when Brazil itself is a much safer environment? No sense at all.

Letting the same courier carry the real thing all the way from the Middle East is equally foolish. Far better to smuggle the goods seperately from their source directly, confirm their arrival, then trigger the courier. Even if the smuggling fails, this way you'd still retain the valuable courier uncompromised. Carrying and declaring a "clean" suitcase from the origin point of maximum susspicion, followed by the old switcheroo with an identical-looking suitcase in Brazil, is a basic trick any junior drug-runner knows.

Which is why the account as given raises questions for me. Of course, if he received the suitcase in Egypt, Brazil doesn't have to look into the possibility of a serious terrorist problem of its own - in Iguazu region, for instance.

We're still not 100% on all the details of this case, as commenter Mike Spenis noted yesterday. There may yet be some twists and turns, especially if Health Canada discovers anything on the quarrantined ship itself. Nevertheless, the report as given has my antennae up. If this is anthrax, we need to know the truth. The whole truth.

UPDATE: Some very good Comments, including updates from former Brazilian resident Alan Myette and excellent links from Yehudit detailing the terrorist connection in the "tri-border" region neaqr Iguazu. Our coverage of the situation continued May 1 - with even more questions arising as the Brazilians backpedal.

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Tracked: April 29, 2003 5:22 PM

Brazilian Anthrax Mystery from Armchair Analyst

Excerpt: Winds of Change is keeping us all updated on the recent news out of Brazil that a man was found dead...with a suitcase full of Anthrax. The source of the Anthrax is still unknown but Katzman and the gang are...

Comments

#1 from Lad at 3:58 pm on Apr 29, 2003

I read the same story yesterday on yahoo, I have a friend scouring portugese websites looking for more information on the story. He's yet to get back to me.

You listed the area as a Al-Qaeda hotbed. The area on the border of Brazil and Argentina isn't a historically base for Al-Qaeda but rather Hezbolla and other Iranian backed terror groups.

#2 from Joe Katzman at 4:09 pm on Apr 29, 2003

First of all, guys, welcome to the Blogosphere! Started yesterday, I see.

I'd be very, very interested in anything you can dig up. Point taken re: al-Qaeda, and I'll change the post, but in practice there is evidence of cooperation between them. Also seem to recall seeing some direct al-Qaeda references re: that area - but I'll change the wording until/unless I find them.

Thanks!

#3 from Alan Myatt at 6:50 pm on Apr 29, 2003

"O Liberal", a Brazilian newspaper in Par� state is reporting here that the first port of entry into Brazil for the crew of the dead man's ship was S�o Paulo. S�o Paulo is about a twelve hour drive from Foz da Igua�u and could have easily been a point of pick-up for a package originating there. Of course, there is no evidence one way or another cited to support this, but in theory it is possible that the suitcase's contents originated there. Whether or not anyone in Foz has the facilities for creating anthrax, I have no idea. I do think that this area is closely watched by intelligence sources of the US, Brazil and Paraguay.

I was in Paraguay on 9/11 and took a flight out from there back to S�o Paulo that afternoon. I was amazed at the presence of U.S. military at the Asuncion airport as I was leaving. I have been through there many times and never before had I seen anything like this.

#4 from Dan Darling at 7:52 pm on Apr 29, 2003

According to Rohan Gunaratna's "Inside al-Qaeda," the group has operations in the Triple Border area as part of the agreement between them and Hezbollah. There was also a CNN story awhile back about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed traveling to Brazil in 1995, which is definitely enough to make one go, "Hmm ..."

#5 from JH at 11:29 pm on Apr 29, 2003

This just in:according to Reuters,the second tests on the Egyptian mariner have proven negative.No anthrax after all.

#6 from farreast at 2:46 am on Apr 30, 2003

But who has the suitcase now. Obviously it did not continue on the ship to Canada.

#7 from Erich Schwarz at 2:56 am on Apr 30, 2003

On the one hand, good if true that this isn't anthrax.

On the other hand, what the heck did the Egyptian sailor die of? Exactly?

Also, if this was such a non-incident, why the alert to Interpol?

It'd be nice to have the feeling that everybody was actually telling everything that they knew, straight, without any convenient lacunae. :^P

#8 from Alan Myatt at 5:48 pm on Apr 30, 2003

I hope that the report from Belem is correct and that there is no anthrax. However, I should point out that a couple of years ago, when I still lived in Rio, an investigative report of a number of health labs in Brazil showed that they had a notorious capacity to return false lab results. The reliability of health lab tests in Brazil is highly questionable, and given that there is an obvious political motive for not finding any anthrax, I would hold out for confirmation from other sources before ruling it out. But I hope that my skepticism turns out to be unfounded.

#9 from Yehudit at 6:24 am on May 01, 2003

The Forward has been following the "terrorism triangle" connections with Al Qeda for several years now:

What was the top leadership of Al Qaeda doing in Brazil during the mid-1990s?

U.S. Hand Seen in Paraguay's Pursuit of Terrorism Suspect

U.S. Joining Terrorism Probe Along Lawless Brazil Border

Tracking Terror's Money Trail in Lawless Frontier

Paraguay's Ciudad del Este, on a remote tropical plain near the borders of Brazil and Argentina, is the Shanghai of modern-day South America.