American Jihad Continues
by Robert Spencer
Posted Mar 11, 2004
Although most media attention has been focused on Martha Stewart, gay marriage, and the national waistline, the jihad continues in America.
The FBI and Coast Guard announced last Thursday that they have discovered nine members of the Merchant Marine who may have links to terrorist groups. This is the fruit of Operation Drydock, an anti-terror investigation that has lasted more than a year. These efforts, while laudable, only underscore the fact that terrorists have already begun to try to take advantage of the vulnerabilities of American seaports.
On the same day, three members of the "Virginia jihad network" were found guilty of conspiracy. Masoud Khan, Seifullah Chapman, and Hammad Abdur-Raheem, played paintball in 2000 and 2001 with a deadly serious purpose: they were training with the hope of joining the Taliban and waging jihad against the United States. Khan was also convicted of attempting to wage war against the U.S.
Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, formerly a high profile Muslim student activist at the University of Idaho, was charged, also on Thursday, with ties to Hamas. He maintains his innocence. FoxNews reported that he "was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism after federal prosecutors said he helped run Web sites that urge people to contribute money to Hamas."
In San Diego on Wednesday, March 3, Ilyas Ali, an American citizen, and Muhamed Abid Afridi, a Pakistani national, admitted to drug trafficking in order to raise money for weapons for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. They were selling heroin and hashish to raise money for Stinger missiles.
On the same day, five Muslims were convicted in Buffalo of trafficking in untaxed cigarettes in order to get money for jihad. Mohamed Abuhamra, Aref Ahmed, Ramzy Abdullah, Nagib Aziz, and Azzeaz Saleh could get twenty years and $500,000 fines for using the smokes to try to raise money to help the the six jihadists from the Lackawanna, New York mosque -- the notorious "Lackawanna Six" journey to Afghanistan to join up with Al-Qaeda.
A member of the Kashmir jihad was arrested last week in Pennsylvania. Mohammad Aslam, a British citizen, was originally arrested for staying in the U.S. after the expiration of his visa. Through his fingerprints, however, he was identified as a member of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, wanted for the kidnap and murder of the Indian diplomat Ravindra Mhatre in England in 1984. Mhatre was seized and killed in an attempt to secure the release from prison of the group's founder, Maqbool Bhat.
Sgt. Hasan Akbar is the Muslim soldier who attacked his own commanding officers in Kuwait last year while crying out, "You guys are coming into our countries, and you're going to rape our women and kill our children" -- a clear indication that his attack grew out of his identity as a Muslim. After a long period of silence, the Army announced last Thursday that it is going to go ahead with a court martial. Akbar could get the death penalty.
The Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) is building a new mosque which they intend to be one of the grandest in the country. Arabic-language brochures boast that the project has the backing of the radical Sheikh Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian now based in Qatar.
In English, the ISB claims that al-Qaradawi "has never played any role in the ISB." However, the Boston Herald reports that "records show al-Qaradawi's name was listed on federal tax forms as recently as 2001 as a member of the society's board of directors." The ISB is not alone in embracing Qaradawi: establishment Islamic scholar John Esposito has praised him as a champion of a "reformist interpretation of Islam."
Yet Qaradawi has justified suicide bombings, specifically praising such attacks against Israeli civilians. In this he works from tenets of Islamic law that forbid attacks against civilians unless they are aiding the war effort -- and Qaradawi sees everyone in Israel in this category. Also, according to the Herald, Qaradawi exclaimed at a Muslim youth group convention in Toledo in 1995: "We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through (the) sword, but through Da'awa [preaching]." The Herald adds that "in March 2003, al-Qaradawi issued a religious ruling, a fatwa, encouraging Muslim women, as well as men, to become suicide bombers in the name of Allah and jihad."
With the biases of the major media abundantly established, it will be interesting to see how much attention such stories receive as the election season kicks into high gear.

Copyright ? 2003 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
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>> MULLAHWATCH...


The IAEA and Iranian cheating
The Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), currently meeting in Vienna, faces a tremendous challenge: what to do about a systematic, ongoing campaign of cheating and deception by Tehran.
It is already clear that once again, Washington and the European Union disagree about whether to take a forceful stance against Iran's refusal to tell the truth about its nuclear program. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton sent a sharply worded letter to Britain, France and Germany stating that their soft stance toward Iran was undercutting common efforts to force the regime to give a full accounting of its efforts to produce atomic weapons.
Germany, France and Britain, representing the European Union, want to emphasize what they euphemistically term Iranian progress toward opening up and eventual dismantling these weapons programs. But their recent performance record is hardly encouraging.
Back in the fall, the three European countries announced that Iran had agreed to stop constructing uranium-enrichment centrifuges, which are used to build nuclear weapons. Then in January, Iran announced that it was building the centrifuges after all. In a remarkable act of impertinence, the regime claimed that the deal did not require that it stop all enrichment-related activities and that it had the right to continue amassing centrifuges. In short, the "EU 3" were hoodwinked.
Unfortunately, such behavior on Iran's part isn't new. In November, the IAEA issued a report documenting Tehran's cheating on nuclear weapons dating back to the mid-1980s. As a Feb. 24 IAEA report explained: "It should be noted that, given the size and capacity of the equipment used, the possibility cannot be excluded that larger quantities of nuclear material could have been involved than those declared by Iran as having been consumed and produced during this testing and experimentation. However, it is very difficult to account precisely for the uranium involved in these processing activities after the passage of many years, especially when some quantities have been discarded."
Tehran, emboldened by the willingness of the EU 3 to run interference against Washington, is digging in its heals. At the start of the IAEA parley, Iran's chief delegate predicted that U.S. efforts to get the agency to pursue a more assertive approach toward his government would fail. The government-controlled press denies that Iran has done anything wrong, and, on Sunday, threatened to stop any cooperation with the IAEA. Hassan Rowhani, a senior official with the country's Supreme Council for National Security, also demanded that Iran be recognized -- along with the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- as part of the world's nuclear club.
But this would be an intolerable outcome. The world would be a much more dangerous place if a violent, paranoid regime like that in Tehran were to become a recognized nuclear power. The clock continues to tick on a successful diplomatic conclusion -- and the hour is late.



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Iran Postpones Visit by U.N. Inspectors
Fri Mar 12, 9:20 AM ET
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria - Iran postponed a planned visit by U.N. nuclear inspectors Friday, and American and European delegates at a key atomic agency meeting debated how harshly to censure Tehran for not fully opening its nuclear activities, diplomats said.
The inspectors were to be in Iran next week as part of the International Atomic Energy Agency's examination of the Iranian nuclear program, which the United States and other countries claim is trying to make nuclear weapons.
Pirooz Hosseini, the chief Iranian delegate to the IAEA, denied that Iran was trying to pressure the agency's board of governors, telling The Associated Press the scheduled inspections were postponed because they would conflict with next week's celebration of the Iranian New Year.
When asked why the celebrations were not taken into account when the invitations were first issued, Hosseini said officials made "a simple mistake."
The IAEA declined comment, but diplomats, speaking anonymously, said the postponement appeared to be an attempt by Iran to tone down an agency resolution addressing Tehran's spotty record of revealing past nuclear secrets and cooperating with the IAEA probe.
Iran, which insists its nuclear intentions are peaceful, has threatened repeatedly over the past few days to reduce cooperation with the U.N. agency if its 35-nation board of governors comes down hard on the Islamic republic.
Consultations were set to resume later Friday, and Hosseini indicated some progress was being made.
"Step by step, there are some better understandings among the parties," he said without elaborating.
On Thursday, the nonaligned bloc at the board of governors watered down a draft resolution backed by the United States, Canada, Australia and European countries. The Western group then rejected the draft as being too gentle on Iran.
The deadlock left Australian, Canadian and Irish diplomats shuttling between U.S. and nonaligned representatives trying to bridge the differences. A Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity that U.S. patience was wearing thin.
Another diplomat said the United States and the Europeans considered the nonaligned modifications unacceptable because they did not sufficiently criticize Iran's record on nuclear openness.
Recent discoveries by IAEA inspectors of undeclared items and programs have cast doubt on Tehran's assertions that it has no more nuclear secrets.
An IAEA report last month accused Tehran of hiding evidence of nuclear experiments and noted the discovery of traces of radioactive polonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons.
The report also expressed concern about the discovery of a previously undisclosed advanced P-2 centrifuge system for processing uranium.
Iran asserts its now-suspended enrichment plans are geared only toward generating power.
But on Wednesday, Iran announced plans to resume enrichment, eliciting a negative response from Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA chief, who said it would hurt Tehran's chances of proving it has no interest in nuclear weapons.
On the Net:
International Atomic Energy Agency: http://www.iaea.org
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>> OUR FRIENDS IN JAPAN...

Japan Company Sold Atomic Plant to Libya

By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria - A Japanese company supplied Libya with technology essential to the production of nuclear weapons, diplomats revealed Friday, adding a new piece to the nuclear black market puzzle.
One of the diplomats called the 1984 sale of a uranium conversion plant a "flagrant example" of the failure of export controls meant to keep such equipment away from rogue nations and terrorists.
He also noted that the parts for such plants are so large and expensive, it would have been difficult to ship them out of the country without the knowledge of the Japanese government.
The officials, who declined to be named, spoke to The Associated Press on the sidelines of a board of governors' meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
In a report earlier this week, the agency mentioned that Libya ordered a "pilot scale uranium conversion facility" in 1984, but did not specify the country of origin.
Such plants are used in the process of enriching uranium that at lower levels can be used to generate power but at levels above 90 percent -- or weapons grade -- can be used in nuclear warheads.
Japan's top government spokesman, Yasuo Fukuda, said Tokyo was already looking into the matter.
"We are conducting an investigation. But we can't discuss the details of our investigation due to our previous agreement with the IAEA not to disclose anything," Fukuda said.
Libya admitted in December to having programs for weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms, and pledged to scrap them. Progress has been rapid since then, with a ship leaving the country for the United States last weekend carrying 500 tons of cargo -- the last of the equipment Moammar Gadhafi's government had used for its nuclear weapons program.
Among the most startling discoveries in Libya were blueprints of a nuclear warhead from Pakistan supplied by the black market network that also sold technology and know-how to Iran and North Korea (news - web sites).
The IAEA report also said Libya had managed to process minute quantities of plutonium that -- in much larger quantities -- are used in the cores of nuclear warheads.
The diplomats declined to identify the Japanese company involved, but described the conversion plant sale as unusual in several respects.
Unlike other deals made by Libya, Iran and North Korea, the sale was apparently directly arranged with the Japanese instead of through middlemen linked to a loose international nuclear sales network headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. But other countries were involved because the packing material originated from outside Japan.
One of the diplomats said Japan's export controls were generally considered effective, suggesting the government must have known about the sales.
"Had Japan reported such a deal to the IAEA earlier, that could have helped to get an earlier start on" investigations of the nuclear black market, which was only exposed in recent months, he said.
If confirmed the transaction would be a violation of Japan's strict export controls and its long-standing policy against possessing or trading nuclear weapons. Japan was the target of the only atomic bomb attacks.
Another diplomat with expert knowledge of Libya's nuclear program said the sheer size of the shipment should have rung alarm bells with Japanese customs authorities.
"It was huge," he said, describing the plant components as filling numerous containers and weighing "tons and tons."
He said the bulkiness of the plant components meant they were probably delivered by ship and not flown in.
Japan was named earlier by investigators active in the probe into the black market network, which also extends from Pakistan to Dubai, Malaysia, South Korea (news - web sites), Switzerland, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and beyond -- with potential ties to Syria, Turkey and Spain.
Earlier this week, the IAEA's board of governors passed a resolution praising Tripoli for its admission, but criticizing it for its earlier nuclear weapons plans. Libya also signed an agreement with the agency opening its nuclear program to far-reaching agency inspections.
Libya did not manage to make enriched uranium or achieve other substantial progress toward making nuclear weapons, the agency said.
Investigators expect to complete the probe by June, eight months after U.S. officials confronted the Pakistani government with suspicions about Khan, setting into motion events that led the father of Islamabad's nuclear program to confess last month.
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Is Pakistan's nuclear programme dying?
Analysis
By Paul Anderson
BBC correspondent in Islamabad
In all the heat generated by Pakistan's leading nuclear scientist, AQ Khan, confessing to nuclear proliferation, relatively little attention has been paid to the future of the country's nuclear weapons programme.
AQ Khan dramatically confessed to leaking nuclear secrets in February.
In the 1970s Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto famously declared that Pakistanis would go to any sacrifice to match India's nuclear weapons programme, even if it meant the people being reduced to eating grass.
Now they have a nuclear programme, they are discovering that weapons technology is a dynamic business which requires constant maintenance and upgrading.
That maintenance has been promised by President Pervez Musharraf.
But nuclear specialist and journalist Shahid ur Rehman believes the president will run into difficulties, the seeds of which were sown many years ago.
"Pakistan's programme was based on smuggled, imported technology," he says. "AQ Khan and his friends went shopping all over the world with the connivance of the Pakistani army.
"By contrast, India's programme was not as sophisticated, but it was indigenous. If there are curbs on India they will not suffer."
Shahid ur Rehman argues that it will be impossible for Pakistan to upgrade its nuclear programme legally.
"If Pakistan needs a nuclear component, they will have to approach the international market. They will not sell it, so Pakistan will have to buy it on the black market."
That means, he argues, that: "Pakistan's nuclear programme is now almost half dead. They won't be able to modernise facilities which are becoming obsolete. It is a de facto roll back."
And that is precisely what President Musharraf has promised to avoid.
"We will continue to develop our capability in line with our deterrent needs. I am the last man who will roll back," General Musharraf promised recently.
Inspections debate
So far, there is no obvious pressure on Pakistan to embark on nuclear reduction or a roll back.
But that could come, if or when new revelations about its proliferation history come to light.
The country could also come under pressure to open its facilities for inspection.
Many Pakistanis regard Dr Khan as a hero
"The outside world would be quite justified in asking the Pakistani government for proper assurances," says AH Nayyar, a physicist and nuclear expert from Qaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
"They could demand to inspect the log books of all sensitive organisations in Pakistan to make sure every single kilo of highly enriched uranium is taken account of. That could be very intrusive," he says.
But as long as President Musharraf is in power, that is extremely unlikely.
"No to an internal independent inquiry and no to United Nations inspections teams," he said after AQ Khan's dramatic confession last month.
He might have added 'no' to joining the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which has been mooted as a possible consequence of the proliferation scandal.
But it has been ruled out by one government official after another.
Pakistan would have to be legally recognised as a nuclear weapons state first, which is unlikely, and India would have to join the NPT at the same time, which is also unlikely.
Double standards?
NPT touches another nerve. There's a widespread belief in Pakistan that it is being singled out for scrutiny while India's weapons programme is overlooked.
Take the recent hi-tech agreement between India and the United States, on cooperation in nuclear power and space technologies.
Samina Ahmed, from the International Crisis Group, believes it is a green light for proliferation.
Khan's Kahuta plant is Pakistan's main nuclear weapons laboratory
"Transfers of dual-use technology, nuclear technology and space technology is violating a basic principle of the Non Proliferation Treaty," she says.
"It is dangerous and counterproductive.
"Dangerous because with some of the gaps in India's nuclear weapons programme being filled in with American support, that will encourage India to go ahead with its ambitious nuclear programme.
"And counter-productive because it will lead to other states playing catch-up."
While these argument rage, Pakistan is quietly hoping the whole issue will go away.
Or if it does not, that the focus of attention is turned on what President Musharraf says is the real menace - the European companies which he says form the backbone of the nuclear black market.
So far though, there is little sign of that happening.

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How to thwart a nuclear black market
BY SALLY ANN BAYNARD
Sally Ann Baynard is a professorial lecturer in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
March 10, 2004
February brought news that we should all pay attention to, especially those of us who live near the two most important nuclear-target cities in America: New York and Washington.
The good news is that Libya spent 20 years and untold millions of dollars trying to develop a nuclear weapons program, but failed. Now Moammar Gadhafi is cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency to dismantle the program and reveal the sources of supply. The bad news is the existence of an international black-market network for supplying parts, machines, technology and even designs for manufacturing nuclear weapons.
Stretching from its roots in the company established by Pakistani nuclear program guru Abdul Qadeer Khan, the covert system has operated through companies from Europe to Malaysia to South Africa, with a hub of operations in Dubai and links to China. Khan has admitted selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. The network leading from Khan is so extensive an operation for one-stop nuclear shopping that IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei called it an "international Wal-Mart."
What does this mean to us? Are we more safe or less safe than we thought?
With the Cold War over and China's nuclear program decades behind the United States', the most damaging nuclear threat, all-out nuclear war, has become extremely improbable - although we should not forget the thousands of nuclear weapons still sitting atop intercontinental ballistic missiles in Russia and continued ICBM development in China.
The second way that nuclear bombs can threaten us is indirect. A regional rogue state, like North Korea or Iran, might decide to use a nuclear weapon against an enemy in its region, for example Japan or Israel. Or one of the regular confrontations between such regional enemies as India and Pakistan could erupt into a nuclear exchange. The damage would severely affect the global economy and cause incalculable harm to the environment, not to mention the resulting worldwide instability, but its effect on the United States is no greater than on the rest of the world.
The third way we are threatened by nuclear weapons is probably the one that gives most of us the greatest anxiety these days: a nuclear weapon in the hands of an anti-American terrorist group. Is it plausible that such a terrorist group possesses such a weapon? Does the existence of the nuclear black market make this terrifying scenario more likely?
It is unlikely that a group possesses such a weapon now or we probably would already have experienced this nightmare. It is remotely plausible that such a group could obtain one or more nuclear bombs, but the likelihood diminishes daily if the United States and international officials do their jobs right.
So the question is, Are they?
The IAEA seems to be on the ball, but the Bush administration could do much better. The administration and Congress must more aggressively fund and implement the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, a 10-year program that has done much in the areas of the former Soviet Union to guard and destroy nuclear materials, weapons and expertise that might otherwise become available on the black market.
President George W. Bush has said he supports this, but his 2005 budget request includes a cut and the administration has not acted quickly in the past to remove bureaucratic barriers to this critical program.
Similarly, after the revelations in February of Pakistan's nuclear aid to Libya, Iran and North Korea and the links with China, the president proposed new measures to restrict the trade in nuclear material. But Bush's proposals and his overall strategy are, in the words of one arms control expert, "too limited and contradictory to address current and future nuclear weapons dangers adequately."
We are no more at risk than we were before this nuclear black market was exposed, and perhaps less so. We can take comfort in the failure of Libya to achieve its ends after two decades, even with plenty of oil money to spend. A full-fledged nuclear program turns out not to be so easy to set up.
If the IAEA continues its investigative work, if the Bush administration steps up to the plate in funding Nunn-Lugar and other programs to control the spread of nuclear weapons, if the president has the courage to deal seriously with Pakistan over its behavior - if all this happens - then maybe we will be significantly less threatened in the future by nuclear weapons.
Copyright ? 2004, Newsday, Inc.



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>> CRONYISM WATCH...

AP: Firms Awarded Iraq Pacts Tied to D.C.
Fri Mar 12, 2:55 AM ET
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The former employer of the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s top contracting official in Iraq (news - web sites) shares part of $130 million in reconstruction business awarded this week.
Many of the companies awarded eight management contracts Wednesday have other strong Washington ties: Several are generous Republican donors and another is partly owned by a Democratic California senator's husband.
The Parsons Brinkerhoff construction company was one of two companies picked to share a $43.4 million contract to help manage reconstruction of Iraq's electricity grid. Retired Navy Rear Adm. David Nash, director of the program management office for the Pentagon in Baghdad, is a former president of a Parsons Brinkerhoff subsidiary.
The company also has Republican connections. It gave $90,000 to various Republican Party committees in the past five years, and $8,500 to similar Democratic groups.
"It's hard to find a major company in America anymore that doesn't have political connections," said Danielle Brian, head of the independent watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. "Federal contracting has become political. Just about every company that can compete does have political connections."
Defense Department officials say neither Nash's connections nor politics had anything to do with the contract award, and all eight awards were chosen through open competition. Army Lt. Col. Joe Yoswa, a Pentagon spokesman, said Nash does not have any authority to award contracts. Parsons Brinkerhoff spokesman Bruce Ross declined comment.
The new contracts were awarded Wednesday and Thursday in the shadow of previous controversy over Iraq reconstruction work given to Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites)'s former firm, Halliburton Co. Some of that work is under criminal investigation.
Halliburton refunded some money for alleged overcharges, and is running a series of television ads contending the criticism of its work is politically motivated.
The Defense Department announced two new reconstruction contracts worth $1.1 billion Thursday night.
A $500 million contract to design and build electricity facilities went to a partnership of the giant construction companies Fluor Corp. and AMEC. A $600 million contract to build drinking water systems went to a partnership of construction companies Washington Group International and Black & Veatch.
Fluor gave $48,000 to Republican committees in the past five years and $4,500 to Democrats. A Fluor vice president, Kenneth Oscar, joined the company in 2002 after spending 20 years as a contracting official at the Pentagon, the latest as acting Army assistant secretary for procurement.
The Pentagon says it chooses contractors based on which have the best management, are most likely to succeed and offer the best price. But an Army general acknowledged at a House hearing Thursday the military has made mistakes.
"We aren't perfect. It is a war zone, and we are correcting mistakes as we find them," said Gen. Paul Kern, head of the Army Materiel Command.
One such mistake was a $327 million contract to outfit the new Iraqi military. The U.S. Army canceled that contract after two losing bidders complained the decision-making process was confusing and contradictory.
The contract was awarded to Nour USA, whose president is A. Houda Farouki. He is a friend of Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council who was close to several top Pentagon officials before the U.S. invasion.
Nour and the Pentagon said Farouki's ties to Chalabi had nothing to do with the award. The Army hopes to have a new bidding process for that contract ready within three months, said Maj. Gary Tallman, a spokesman.
Republicans aren't the only ones with ties to Iraq contractors. URS Group Inc., partly owned by Richard C. Blum, the husband of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, was part of a two-company team that won $27.7 million in Iraq business Wednesday.
Blum is vice chairman of URS Group, which in partnership with New Jersey's Louis Berger Group will help manage reconstruction of Iraq's transportation, communications, security, education and health infrastructure.
Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman said Blum's connections had nothing to do with the Iraq contracts. URS Group spokeswoman Judith Lillard did not return a telephone message.
Another contract, worth $28.5 million, went to a partnership of engineering firm CH2M Hill of suburban Denver and California construction firm Parsons Corp., which is not related to Parsons Brinkerhoff.
CH2M Hill gave $69,000 to Republican committees over the past five years and $34,000 to Democratic committees. The head of the company, Ralph R. Peterson gave $6,000 each to Republican and Democratic candidates during that time.
Karen Steeper, a CH2M Hill spokeswoman, said federal rules forbid the consideration of politics in awarding contracts.


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>> CANADA...

Meat from Farm May Have Had Human Remains
Thu Mar 11, 8:07 AM ET
By Allan Dowd
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Pork products processed and distributed from the farm of accused Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton may have contained human remains, police and health officials said on Wednesday.
Pickton raised and slaughtered pigs at the Port Coquitlam farm as a part-time occupation until his arrest at the property in February 2002, and police believe he gave or sold processed meat products to friends and acquaintances.
Pickton, 53, is awaiting trial in the killings of at least 22 of more than 60 missing Vancouver prostitutes who disappeared over the past decade and are feared to have been murdered at the dilapidated farm 20 miles east of Vancouver.
"Given the state of the farm, and what we know about the investigation, we cannot rule out the possibility that cross-contamination may have occurred," B.C. provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall told reporters in Victoria.
"Cross-contamination could mean that human remains did get into or contaminate some of the pork meat," Kendall said.
Officials stressed that the farm's pig slaughtering operation was not officially licensed and he did not sell processed meat to retail outlets.
"There is no evidence we are dealing with anything other than a very specific localized issue, with a specific number of local people," said Cpl. Catherine Galliford of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Kendall said he was not contacted by the police until last month when they asked a "hypothetical question' about the potential health risk. He issued the alert when they later said it probably happened.
Details of evidence from the farm were presented in court last year at Pickton's preliminary hearing, but a court order prohibits reporters who covered the hearing from publishing details of what they heard until it is used in his trial, which will likely not start until next year.
Police defended the timing of their contacting health officials, saying it was needed to protect the investigation, although they also acknowledged more people may have received meat from Pickton than they had originally thought.
"We have carefully considered all the issues," said Vancouver Police Detective Shelia Sullivan.
Pickton is officially charged with 15 murders but prosecutors have said seven more counts are waiting to be filed. Tests have identified the DNA of nine more women, but not yet resulted in charges.
The victims were among more than 60 drug-addicted prostitutes who disappeared from Vancouver's poor Downtown Eastside neighborhood. Families of the missing women expressed horror at the news, with one telling a Vancouver radio station bluntly. "I'm not eating dinner tonight."
Pickton, in custody since his arrest, is the only person charged in the case. He has not entered a plea to the criminal charges but denied wrongdoing in a related civil lawsuit.