Salman Pak facility

The Salman Pak, or al-Salman, facility is an Iraqi military facility near Baghdad. At one time, it was a key center of Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons programs.

The Salman Pak facility is located approximately 15 miles (24 km) south of Baghdad on a peninsula formed by a broad eastward meander of the Tigris River, near a town also called Salman Pak. The facility grounds comprise approximately 20 square kilometres. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the installation was a key center of Iraq's biological and chemical weapon programs. In 1989 and 1990, the laboratories in the complex researched anthrax, botulinum, clostridium, perfringens, mycotoxins, aflatoxins, and ricin. A special forces training camp at the southernmost point of the shifting land form was also used by the Mukhabarat (Iraqi Intelligence) as the headquarters for its Special Operations [14th] Directorate.

The facility was discussed in the leadup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a result of a campaign by Iraqi defectors associated with the Iraqi National Congress (INC) to assert that the complex incorporated a purpose-built terrorist training camp; a narrative first promoted by westeren journalists David Rose and Judith Miller. Internally, both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) concluded that there was no evidence to support these claims. A DIA analyst told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the INC "has been pushing information for a long time about Salman Pak and training of al-Qa'ida." Reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel noted in November 2005 that "After the war, U.S. officials determined that a facility in Salman Pak was used to train Iraqi anti-terrorist commandos."

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