S. African terror threat suspect due in court

A Zimbabwean-born South African businessman living west of Pretoria, South Africa evoked the wrath of international law-enforcement agencies when he allegedly threatened to unleash an unprecedented biological attack on the UK and US.

The attack, thought to have been planned since July, is believed to have been aimed at poisoning the livestock and large farming areas of both countries, with the suspect allegedly threatening to release foot-and-mouth disease.

Diseases such as these could have an economically crippling effect on a country and could see its government having to cull millions of heads of cattle, sheep, pigs and other livestock and see farmers having to abandon their land, which would also be poisoned.

Specialised South African police officers, along with their British and US counterparts, arrested the suspect this weekend at a storage facility in Hartbeespoort in North West province when the 64-year-old businessman came to collect the nearly R32 million ransom he was allegedly demanding in the form of Kruger rands.

The businessman, who is being held at an undisclosed Joburg police station, is to appear in the Wynburg Magistrate's Court in Alexandra on Monday on terrorism charges.

The businessman is alleged to own a multi-million-rand home in the upmarket Hartbeespoort suburb of Kosmos and several other houses in Gauteng.

Specialised police officers, using the SAPS air wing, the South African Air Force and military intelligence operatives, swooped on the man on Saturday as he arrived at the storage facility.

While police have refused to divulge the nature of the planned attacks, the former SAPS Veterinarian Services head, Hannes Strydom, who recently retired from the SAPS, said such biological attacks could potentially cripple a country's economy.

"If you look at what police units were involved in in the planning and execution of the operation, one can see that the threats were extremely serious," he said.

"The fact that the SAPS veterinarian unit was involved shows that the threat was possibly against a country's food supply which, if destroyed, could cripple a state."

Strydom said he believed that such a threat could have been in the form of a bacterial diseases similar to anthrax or botulism, or the foot-and-mouth disease virus.

Giving an idea of how lethal a disease like botulism - the most potent biological toxin - was, Strydom said it was believed that only a teaspoon of the disease was needed to make the entire Hartbeespoort Dam toxic.

"Not only can these diseases affect livestock and wildlife, but they are also potentially lethal to humans and can destroy land," he said.

SAPS spokeswoman Brigadier Sally de Beer said the suspect would appear in court on terrorism charges.

"He allegedly threatened to release a biological weapon in the UK if his demands for $4 million (R29m) were not met," she said, adding that he had also allegedly threatened to attack the US.

De Beer declined to divulge the nature of the attacks, except to say that they had taken them seriously.

She said Scotland Yard, the UK Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism unit, the FBI along with the SAPS's Hawks, Special Task Force, Crime Intelligence and veterinarian services had been involved in the operation.

"Together with the South African Air Force and the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, which provided logistical support, we were able to arrest the suspect, bringing an end to a six-month operation," she said.

De Beer said the man had allegedly made his threats through repeated e-mails and letters stating that he would strike within the UK's borders.

"This biological agent, if deployed, would have caused the destruction of property and resulted in major economic loss," she said.

US embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau confirmed the FBI's involvement in the case and said that the arrest was made through close collaboration between US law-enforcement agents, the SAPS and UK authorities.