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Experiences of a Dutch Journalist

 

 

 

 
Stepnogorsk, April 2000
 

Joining an American team of specialists on their dangerous mission to dismantle the biggest biological weapon plant in the world. The factory 'Stepnogorsk' could produce the same amount of deadly anthrax as a soft drink factory can produce coca cola....

 

 

Staying in the biggest Russian style hotel in the city: no hot water, no restaurant, just a bed with a concrete mattress.

 

Dressed for the ocassion.

 

Walking to 'Building 221'. It looks like an ordinary building, but inside it houses the main production hall.

 

Everything is literally cut to pieces.

 

View from the roof of 'Building 221'.

 

Tubes with an unknown substance.

 

The team is taking samples to test the content back home.

 

'Working in the USSR', or the red book of labour.

 

Kazakhstan dismantles the factory under the supervision of the United States.

 

The cellar of 'Building 221' houses ten of these twenty thousand litre tanks to cultivate the anthrax.

 

The Russian scientists worked in these 'moon suits'.

 

These cages still remind of the animal tests.

 

Signing the contract for the last phase of the dismantling. In 2002, this deadly Soviet legacy should be completely distroyd.

 

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