Speculation is mounting the deadly poison found in a north London flat this week was to be used in an assassination attempt on a leading public figure in Britain.
British Police are today continuing to question seven men suspected of plotting a terror attack using the lethal poison ricin and have stepped up the hunt for several suspects feared to be at large with some of the deadly substance.
Six men, at least some of whom are Algerian, were arrested in the raid on the Wood Green flat and other addresses in north and east London on Sunday.
It was announced yesterday that a seventh man had also been arrested It also emerged that two of the men were teenage asylum seekers.
Police are unsure how much ricin was made at the flat because only traces of the poison were found among the equipment to make it.
Experts consider ricin, which has no known antidote, to be ideal for political assassinations. In aerosol form it killed Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978 when the tip of an umbrella was used as the means of delivery.
It is also feared a series of random attacks on individuals or small groups may have been planned to to terrorise the population. The product can be made into a cream and smeared somewhere where many people would touch it, such as escalators on the London Underground or door handles.
The poison can also be administered by injection, ingestion, inhalation or by physical contact.
Analysts say anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry could make ricin in their own home. The formula is available on the Internet and requires only castor oil beans and some widely available chemicals.
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