Produced by processing castor beans, ricin is 6,000 times more lethal than cyanide and has no known antidote

A Tunisian man arrested in Germany in possession of the deadly poison ricin and bomb-making material was planning a biological attack, the national police chief said yesterday. Holger Muench, president of the Federal Criminal Office, told the broadcaster RBB-Inforadio that the suspect had manufactured ricin, a poison found in castor beans, and that objects had been found in searches that could be used to make a bomb. “Very concrete preparations had been made for an act with a … biological bomb, which is a first for Germany,” Holger Muench, head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, told public broadcaster ARD.German police commandos on June 12 stormed the Cologne apartment of the 29-year-old Tunisian migrant identified only as Sief Allah H. and discovered “toxic substances” that turned out to be ricin. The Tunisian man, who has been charged with possession of weapons of war and planning a serious act of violence against the state, was thought to have followed instructions on making a ricin bomb disseminated online by the IS. Prosecutors have said he was "strongly suspected of intentionally manufacturing biological weapons" - but they reiterated Wednesday they still lacked concrete indications or details of an attack plan. It was the first time Germany had dealt with a possible attack with a biological weapon, Frank said, although Islamist militants had discussed such an attack for some time in their communications.
German authorities arrest a Tunisian man accused of building a ricin bomb.