07.21.15
FBI and British police team up to bag mentally handicapped man in ricin sting
UPDATED
Since last year and perhaps earlier, the FBI has been deep into the so-called dark web with special agents posing as poison peddlers on the digital black markets accessed by the Tor browser.
The effort has generated a few arrests and graphically shown the FBI coordinates with British security when those who think they’re buying something like ricin on the — cough — “dark web” are from England.
A married father of two bought enough ricin on the “dark web??? to kill 1,400 people, a court has heard.
And Mohammed Ali allegedly hoped to make sure the deadly poison was genuine by testing it on a pet rabbit from a rescue centre.
Prosecutor Sally Howes said Ali asked for the ricin to be sent in five 100mg vials after contacting a US dealer with the name Dark Mart …
But Ali was in fact dealing with an FBI agent who alerted British police.
Ali, the newspaper notes while covering the trial, “has Asperger syndrome …”
On the third day of his trial on Thursday, jurors heard that Ali was placed into a protective boiler suit and led to a police van after up to 12 officers wearing gas masks raided the flat he shares with his wife and two sons shortly before 8am on 11 February.
The trial judge, Mr Justice Saunders, urged jurors to treat Ali’s remarks “critically??? as they were made without the presence of a lawyer. He was then taken to a police station where he answered “no comment??? to every question during five days of questioning, the court heard.
Saunders told jurors: “You must bear in mind at all times that it was an interview carried out without the defendant having the benefit of a lawyer there or someone on his behalf during the interview.???
If you read the piece, observers are again informed FBI special agents had mailed the accused man a harmless white powder.
In October last year, [Ali] began trawling the internet for information on poisons such as abrin, ricin and cyanide, the court has heard.
Then in January, going under the online alias Weirdos 0000, Ali contacted a man called Psychochem on the internet black market and ordered 500mg of ricin – enough to kill 1,400 people, the jury was told.
Today, the jury was told that Ali, a computer software programmer, had displayed many traits of Asperger’s syndrome.
Giving evidence for his defence, clinical psychologist Dr Alison Beck highlighted his obsession from a very early age with computers …
Cross-examining, prosecutor Sarah Howes, QC, suggested: “People can be hooked on their computers and not have anything wrong at all.???
The witness agreed it was “not diagnostic in itself???.
Ms Howes went on: “Is it your assistance to the jury that as far as the offence is concerned it was just his obsession with wanting to deal with the Dark Net that was the end in itself????
Dr Beck replied: “I think that so far as I understand it, Mr Ali was motivated with pushing the boundaries of what was possible with the technology.
“The relevance of the Dark Net was to procure ricin and that idea was implanted in his brain having watched the series Breaking Bad.???
She told jurors that he had tried to get ricin through “systematic research??? which was “entirely consistent with Asperger’s mentality???.
Mohammed Ali is not the first man with Asperger’s to be arrested in connection with ricin.
In 2004, Robert Alberg, a man from Kirkland, Washington, with Asperger’s syndrome was arrested.
And in the earlier part of the decade, an autistic man, Robert Alberg, listed in my article The A-Z of ricin crackpots, purchased five pounds of castor seeds with the intent to make ricin and was arrested.
The court recognized Alberg was profoundly impaired and released him under a five year parole sentence. He promptly went back to trying to obtain castor seeds and was jailed.
Alberg was known in Kirkland, WA, as another outsider musician, one who sang songs, now mounted at YouTube.
An old mention of Alberg, from me, at GlobalSecurity.Org, eleven years ago:
Robert Alberg, a Kirkland, Washington, man with Asperger’s Disorder, recently admitted that he “cooked up” a batch of ricin in his apartment, by way of an article from the Seattle Post. The plea was part of an agreement that gave him five years probation, mental health treatment and placement in a group home for the impaired.
Alberg was arrested earlier in the year by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force acting on a tip from Gurney’s Seed & Nursery, which sold Alberg five pounds of castor seeds. The FBI found castor seed mash at Alberg’s residence and jars labeled “caution ricin poison.”
anon said,
July 22, 2015 at 4:18 pm
I would have figured he had his boxing money invested well enough to last through his retirement and even give his kids a nice inheritance.
Wait. What? It’s a different guy?
Sigh. They’ll make a lot of noise about picking the lowest-hanging fruit, in the hopes of discouraging everybody from even thinking about doing something naughty. I think that anyone who decides to buy a castor bean might as well put a big “Arrest Me” sign on his or her back.
George Smith said,
July 23, 2015 at 10:52 am
You would think those who run the alleged black sites behind the Tor network would have come to the conclusion they’ve been infiltrated by law enforcement and that such a thing is not hard to do.