Stockholm - A Swedish spy helped to sow the seeds of today's anthrax scare as long ago as World War 1 when he plotted to poison draft animals with anthrax-laced sugar cubes.
In mid-winter 1917, Germany sent Baron Otto Karl von Rosen, a mercenary from neutral Sweden, on a mission to sabotage British Arctic supply lines to its ally Russia, a crime historian said on Wednesday.
Norwegian police arrested Von Rosen with 19 sugar cubes containing tiny glass vials of anthrax - the same lethal germ that has killed three people in the US this month.
The baron's co-conspirators had planned to spread an anthrax epidemic by feeding the poisoned treats to army horses and reindeer.
The animals were pulling sledges laden with arms and supplies across the frozen tundra to Russia from the port of Skibotn in northern Norway.
Two of the contaminated cubes lay undisturbed in a police museum in Trondheim, Norway, until 1997, when a concerned official sent them to a British biological warfare laboratory for tests.
The spores were still alive, museum registrar Lars Koen said. They have now been sterilised and sent back to the museum for display.
The failed plot was one of very few confirmed attempts to actually use biological warfare, although several major powers developed germ stockpiles during the 20th century.
Germany and perhaps also France developed modern disease warfare techniques, including anthrax, as early as World War 1, according to a Swedish parliamentary defence commission report. - Reuters