Kabul house of anthrax secrets

On the face of it, the house is perfectly ordinary: set back from the road in a leafy Kabul suburb, it was the headquarters for a Pakistan-based aid organisation which did good works during the grim times of the Taliban. But inside the house, spread over the floor of an upstairs room, are documents giving detailed information about anthrax and United States army plans to vaccinate its troops. In a makeshift workshop are what appears to be a disassembled rocket, with bars of solid fuel propellent by a piece of casing and a cylinder labelled "helium".

Among the documents already rifled by looters searching for valuables after the Taliban fled is a tape box with Jihad - meaning holy war - written in front next to a picture of a machine gun. Scribbled on the spine are the words Osama bin Laden.

Downstairs by the French windows are two giant boxes containing black gas masks. By the door are two test tubes, sitting next to what looks like a stripped-down anti-tank shell.

Most tantalising of all, scrawled over a wall chart mounted on plasterboard and running the length of the room, are a series of illustrations which seem to show plans for an anthrax bomb. The diagrams, in black marker pen, are detailed and esoteric, with pictures of helium balloons rising on carefullymeasured trajectories of 10 kilometers, then apparently being shot down by a jet fighter. Scrawled in blue marker pen over the fighter, in block capitals, are the words: "Your days are limited - bang."

On a computer disc is a picture showing a former US defence secretary, William Cohen, holding a small bag of sugar "to show the amount of the biological weapon anthrax that could destroy half the population of Washington, DC."

On the floor is a small bag of white powder, tightly wrapped. Since 11 September, the US has been on high alert against possible chemical delivery systems, including crop-dusting planes and road petrol tankers. Now it may have to include balloons.

Balloons seem to offer an attractive and relatively straightforward means for spreading anthrax to the average terrorist. A balloon is cheap and simple to use. It attracts less attention than an aeroplane and needs no engine.

Best of all, it can take the disease spores up to the high altitudes where a combination of high winds and the long life of the microbes - they can survive for decades - would be a lethal combination.

One explanation is that someone had hit on a cheap and easy way to distribute anthrax by using a balloon. Once up, the best way to get a wide spread would be to explode the balloon, hence the bits of rocket. The best way to explode it, for someone not wanting to carrying a radio control device around Washington or New York, would be to get the US air force to shoot it down for them.

Some of the anthrax-related papers have been copied many times over. suggesting some sort of seminar may have taken place in this room.

Some were apparently downloaded from the US Department of Defence, others are magazine cuttings of stories on anthrax. One reads: "Spores can be easily spread in the air by missiles, rockets, artillery, aerial bombs and sprayers."

Officially the aid group based here, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) or Foundation For Construction, was in Afghanistan to develop everything from roads to schools to agriculture and the house is also full of cases of medicines and boxes of pills. It is also full of exercise books and clothes. Local people report that the Pakistani aid workers moved into the house some years before bringing their wives and children with them. "When the American bombing started, they moved the children out right away," said one man. "The men stayed till the end. They left when the Taliban left." The UTN has already gained the notice of Washington: its president is Bashiruddin Mehmood, one of Pakistan's senior nuclear scientists.

Last month he was arrested and interrogated by Pakistan over his links to the Taliban. Mr Mehmood said the links were for humanitarian reasons and he has since been released.

Officially, the UTN funded a road scheme for Kandahar as well as farming projects, a bank and bakeries.

But it may also have been involved in something far more dangerous. Since Taliban forces fled early last week, a string of houses occupied by Arab and Pakistani members of the Taliban or al Qaeda have been uncovered.

They contain everything from information on nuclear weapons to how-to-do-it books about bombs and guns. But this is the first time any possible link with anthrax has been made. Newspapers in the house give some indication of the thinking of those who lived there. There are copies of hard-line Taliban English-language newspapers with one issue, from August 1999, carrying headlines such as "Jihad is the only way to a life of honour".

Also scattered on the floor of the house, who?s former owner is now busy cleaning it, are hundreds of printed leaflets entitled "The biological warfare - an imminent danger?"

There is every possibility that this is all an elaborate hoax. These apparent signs of a plot to spread anthrax on a wide and deadly scale may have been left here in the knowledge that they would be discovered; they could be just a cynical attempt to exploit fears in the West.

However, there is also the possibility that this is a genuine anthrax bomb factory. This is certainly what the plans appears to show, but this explanation must remain conjecture. The powder discovered has yet to be tested. This may prove the key to knowing how authentic this find is.

The Evening Standard has alerted the Northern Alliance and US intelligence sources to the house and its contents.

Aid for Marjan the lion's zoo