Saddam’s Black Death Site at Salman Pak

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday April 07, 2003 23:59 by Avi H.

Iraq never wanted to harm nobody...

While the world’s gaze is fixed on the sensational developments in Baghdad and Basra, US weapons of mass destruction specialists are using a toothcomb to go through one of the grimmest sites of the Saddam era: Salman Pak, center of biological weapons development and training ground for foreign Islamic terrorists. The site, 25 km southeast of Baghdad, was captured by the American 1st Marine Expeditionary Force last Friday, April 4.

Its situation on a 20 sq.km area inside a curve formed by the Tigris River made it easier for Saddam’s Directorate of General Intelligence to isolate the site, which was fenced off and patrolled by a large guard force. The American soldiers found the buildings of this dreaded place intact, like so many other locations in this war, as though its owners thought they were coming back soon. Two of those buildings are luxury private villas owned by Saddam and his half-brother Barazan al-Tikriti.

Salman Pak is where, up to 1991 at least, the Iraqis developed their biological weapons. Dr. Rihab Taha, known to US intelligence as “Dr. Germ”, engaged in research on a massive scale on anthrax, botulinum toxin, ricin and other poisons to man. Its facilities are expected to yield promising leads to hidden WMD locations around the country.