Reports have emerged, warning that the Islamic State militants may have plans of weaponising the Ebola virus, to create panic in US and UK.
A recent Forbes report raised widespread concern after it claimed that terror groups, such as the Islamic State, might use Ebola as a bio-terrorism weapon in strategic locations to spread the disease.
A National Security Expert told Forbes that ISIS jihadists or even its allies could intentionally infect themselves with the Ebola virus and then these human carriers could then spread it to any city of their choice in the UK, the US or even Australia.
"The individual exposed to the Ebola Virus would be the carrier," Al Shimkus, a retired professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College. "In the context of terrorist activity, it doesn't take much sophistication to go to that next step to use a human being as a carrier."
The Ebola virus that started off in Liberia has now infected thousands of people in West Africa. The spread of deadly disease has shown that how easily it can travel through air transportation system via human carriers.
With West Africa becoming a hot-bed of the highly contagious virus, an Islamic State jihadi could simply enter the country and take with him or her some infected bodily fluids for use elsewhere at another time, noted Shimkus.
The ISIS can use its suicide bomber squad for turning themselves into Ebola carriers, who will then interact with as many people as possible in a target city, say for example New York, London or even Sydney.
"ISIS fighters believe in suicide and this is a potential job for a suicide mission.They are sufficiently murderous and well-informed to consider it," said Professor Anthony Glees of Buckingham University's Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, reported The Mirror.
Similarly, Amanda Teckman, author of the paper, "The Bioterrorist Threat of Ebola in East Africa and Implications for Global Health and Security" in the Global Policy Journal, May 2013 Issue, noted that "the virus' ability to be used as a bio-weapon is a potential global security threat."
Ebola virus is a risk to national security, as "it can be easily disseminated or transmitted from person to person; result in high mortality rates and have the potential for major public health impact," Teckman stated.
It is, however, interesting to note that just as the Western media is worried about ISIS using Ebola as a weapon, the Liberian public suspect that Ebola is the result of a bio-terrorism experiments gone wrong.
In an article published in Liberian newspaper The Daily Observer, the Liberian-born Cyril Broderick, who is a tenured professor at Delaware State University blamed the US Department of Defence for the Ebola outbreak in Liberia.
In his report (Via National Post), Professor Broderick suggested that the US Department of Defence (DoD) wanted to use Ebola as a bio-weapon, for which it had undertaken human trials in Liberia. However, the experiment went horribly wrong.
According to the World Health Organisation, the Ebola virus has killed over 4,000 people, including the most recent Ebola patient undergoing treatment in Texas.
