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US scapegoats man in connection with poison letter to Obama

25 April 2013 19:52 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The Mississippi man accused last week of sending poisonous letters to US President Barack Obama, a senator and a judge, says he was framed, APA reports quoting Press TV.

“I can’t help but think now how many people are thrown in jail because of circumstantial evidence and somebody can frame you that easily,” said Paul Kevin Curtis in a report published by the Guardian on Wednesday.

US authorities suspected Curtis for mailing the letters because of online postings he had made indicating he distrusts the government.

This is while Curtis’ attorney, Christi McCoy, has insisted that “There is absolutely not a shred of evidence to link this poor guy” to an attempted poisoning.

“He is the perfect scapegoat, the perfect patsy, and it’s really sad because at first everybody’s like, you know, he’s kind of crazy, maybe he did it. But as the searches continued, there’s just nothing on this guy. Nothing on his computers, in his car, in his house,” said McCoy.

US authorities arrested Curtis on April 17 and charged him with sending ricin-laced letters to Obama, Senator Roger Wicker and Judge Sadie Holland.

However, charges were later dropped after investigators failed to turn up any trace of ricin or ingredients related to the production of the poison at his home.

“I heard the word ricin for the first time in my life from a federal agent in Homeland Security while being interrogated for four hours in a federal building in Oxford [Mississippi],” said Curtis, adding that he thought investigators were asking about ‘rice’ and “I’m not even a rice lover.”

Investigators first insisted that the letters tested positive for containing the deadly bio agent but then announced that a more accurate examination of the mailings must be conducted at specialized FBI laboratories to confirm earlier tests.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the US confronted a series of alleged ‘anthrax attacks’ that were never formally solved. A former Army scientist, Steven Hatfill, was falsely and publicly implicated and later exonerated by way of several lawsuit settlements. Officials later focused on Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins, who killed himself in 2008, though the case against him was also met with doubts.