British authorities disclosed Wednesday that only one of nine North African men accused of conspiring to spread deadly poisons two years ago had been convicted, and that four had been acquitted. The charges were dropped against the remaining four. The case began in January 2003, when the British police made arrests in North London and East London and said they had found a small amount of the poison ricin in an apartment they had raided. The next month, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cited the arrests at the United Nations as he presented the United States’ argument that there were links between Al Qaeda and Iraq and that there was clear evidence of Iraq’s pursuing unconventional weapons. Such weapons were never found; a commission investigating the 9/11 attacks found no working partnership between Al Qaeda and Iraq; and it turned out that the British police had not, in fact, found any ricin in the London apartment. Full Story
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