Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi (Arabic: رحاب رشيد طه; born 12 November 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.[1] Dr Taha admitted producing germ warfare agents but said they had been destroyed.[2]
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. 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.[3]
Taha first rose to prominence in the Western media after being named in a 2003 British intelligence dossier, released to the public by the 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.[4] It was this dossier that triggered the chain of events that led to the suicide of British UN weapons inspector David Kelly, who was accused of telling a BBC reporter that some of the intelligence had been manipulated. Kelly, as an UNSCOM weapons inspector visiting Iraq on the occasions described below, had interrogated Taha so pitilessly that she was "reduced to tears".[5]