Ricin plot in Germany broken up.

The apartment complex where the suspect lived. NBC News/AFP.

A terror plot involving the poison ricin has been broken up in Germany. NBC News. The suspect was a 29 year old Tunisian man named Sief Allah H. and was arrested on charges of the War Weapons Control Act. He purchased a large number of castor beans, which are used to make ricin, last May. The suspect then succeeded in creating ricin when authorities arrested the man. The suspect was planning an attack but those plans do not seem to be very advanced other than the creation of the toxin to be used in the attack. German authorities do not know if there is any connection to a terror organization. 

My Comment:

A very dangerous plot that was broken up in Germany. And it looks like it was averted just in time. The suspect had created ricin and could have killed people with it. Ricin has been developed as a chemical weapon but it is not a very effective one. Though it is very deadly, you have to use a huge amount compared to other agents. 

Making ricin is the easy part though. What was going to be difficult for this attacker was finding a way to deploy it. The ricin needs to be deployed over a large area with some kind of explosive and that is more difficult than with other chemical weapons. Such problems are possible to overcome but I don't know if this suspect had the experience and resources to do so. 

Ricin is a much better agent for assassination. Famously, the Russians have used ricin to murder dissidents. Less effectively ricin has been used in attacks via the mail. Those attacks almost always fail, but a clever attacker could use ricin to kill people rather easily. It is possible that the attacker was going to use ricin this way, but that's usually not the style of terrorists. Killing random people with ricin does not seem as effective as a spectacular terror attack with the agent, though it probably be much easier to pull off. 

Still, even with the difficulties in using ricin as a terror weapon, it would still be very effective. Even a partially successful attack would have caused a mass panic out of proportion to the lives lost. People have an innate fear of chemical weapons and a successful terror plot using them would be a game-changer, especially if it happened in Europe.  

It seems pretty obvious that this attack was motivated by Islamic extremism. I can't prove that because none of the sources I have seen have confirmed that for sure, but with the suspect being a foreign national with a very obvious Muslim name it seems pretty clear. I guess it is possible that there were other motivations but I would not put money on it. 

The question now is if this suspect had any help. There are quite a few terror organizations that have experience with chemical weapons. ISIS had a very active chemical weapons program in Syria and Iraq before they were largely defeated in the country. Though I don't recall them using ricin, they did have experience with the delivery side of the chemical weapons problem. If one of their experts on chemical warfare managed to survive they may have passed their knowledge onto others. 

On the other hand, it's not like ricin itself is hard to make. You don't need any special connections to terror groups to get castor beans or make ricn. Castor oil plants are extremely common and are a common decorative plant. They are everywhere and despite the obvious danger of the castor bean, nobody would have much trouble finding some.  Making ricin isn't that difficult either from what I understand and instructions to do so can be easily found on the internet. 

No matter what it is good that this attack was broken up. If it hadn't a lot of people could have died. Given that Ramadan ends today, it is possible that an attack was very close to happening. Thankfully, that didn't happen.