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Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi (born 1957) is an Iraqi microbiologist, dubbed Dr. Germ by United Nations weapons inspectors, who worked in Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program. A 1999 report commissioned by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) named her as one of the world's most dangerous women.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=A Profile of WMD Proliferants: Are There Commonalities? )〕 Dr Taha admitted producing germ warfare agents but said they had been destroyed.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title= Iraq's women scientists )〕 Dr. Rihab Rashida Taha ranks among the most important of a new breed of Third World weapons designers who were highly nationalistic, western-educated and willing to violate any international norms or scientific ethics. Taha worked hard to contribute to Iraqi weapons program although she was not a gifted student as Dr. John Turner, the head of the university’s biology department in England, recalls. As a result of Taha’s hard work she became known as the mother of all third world biological weapons programs. It was Taha who sold the idea of an Iraqi biological weapons program to Saddam Hussein and was given an award for her work in biological weapons, specifically the development of anthrax and botulinum weapons by Saddam Hussein. Moreover, she has been held up as an example to Iraqi women interested in science. Taha first rose to prominence in the Western media after being named in a 2003 British intelligence dossier, released to the public by Prime Minister Tony Blair, on Iraq's biological, chemical and nuclear capability. The dossier alleged that Taha had played a leading role in the manufacture of anthrax and other biological agents.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=UK dossier on Iraq )〕 It was this dossier that triggered the chain of events that led to the death of British UN weapons inspector David Kelly, who was accused of telling a BBC reporter that some of the intelligence had been manipulated. Dr. Kelly, as an UNSCOM weapons inspector visiting Iraq on the occasions described below, had interrogated Dr. Taha so pitilessly that she was "reduced to tears" (ref. Norman Baker "The Strange Death of David Kelly", 2007). ==Background== Born in 1957, and a graduate of the University of Baghdad, Taha received her Ph.D in plant toxins from the University of East Anglia's School of Biological Sciences in Norwich, England, which she attended from 1980 to 1984. She published two articles on her research, co-authored by her supervisor Professor John Turner, once the head of the School of Biological Sciences. In 1984, "Contribution of tabtoxin to the pathogenicity of ''Pseudomonas syringae'' pv. ''tabac''" was published in ''Physiological Plant Pathology'' (25, 55-69) and "Effect of tabtoxin on nitrogen metabolism" by J.G. Turner, R.R. Taha & J.M. Debbage was published in ''Physiologia Plantarum'' in 1986 (67, 649-653).〔()〕 Taha is married to the British-educated General Dr. Amir Mohammad Rashid al-Ubaidi, the former Iraqi oil minister and director of Iraq's Military Industrial Corporation, which was responsible for Saddam's advanced weapons programs. Taha met General Rashid, who has a Ph.D in engineering from the University of Birmingham in England, when they were both invited to New York for a meeting with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1993. At the time, Taha was in her late 30s, unmarried and without children, a highly unusual situation for an Arab woman. Already married with a six-year-old son, General Rashid took Taha as his second wife when they returned to Baghdad. In 1997, Saddam Hussein awarded Taha a medal of scientific achievement and, prior to the 2003 war on Iraq, broadcasts were aired showing Taha and Saddam sitting next to each other. On May 12, 2003, the U.S. government announced that Taha had surrendered to coalition forces. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rihab Taha」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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