Het Litvinenko Complot

quote:

Op vrijdag 24 november 2006 13:40 schreef Dante_A het volgende:
Het was zelfmoord, let op mijn woorden...

quote:

Op vrijdag 24 november 2006 19:55 schreef Cyclonis het volgende:
ik sluit op zich niet uit dat de russische regering erachter zit, maar je kan de argumenten ook op een andere manier bekijken

als Putin zo untouchable is, waarom zou hij zich dan iets aantrekken van een journaliste die zich al jaren negatief uit over Putin, maar nog niet zijn populariteit omlaag gehaald? waarom zou hij haar juist vermoorden wat zijn populariteit zeker omlaag haalt, zelfs als niet bewezen wordt dat hij erachter zit, maar het speculeren juist voldoende is?

quote:

volgens mij wil je als machthebber je critici juist extra beschermen, want als ze op de een of andere manier vermoord worden dan gaat iedereen logischerwijs jou meteen verdenken en gaat je populariteit omlaag en wordt juist bevestigd wat je critici al die tijd zeggen.

quote:

kortom, het lijkt tegenstrijdig, maar het beste wat je kan doen om een criticus het zwijgen op te leggen als hij het heeft over jouw ondemocratische wijze, is juist om hem zoveel mogelijk te laten praten. als je hem uit de weg ruimt, wordt zijn punt juist alleen maar bewezen

quote:

 
In 1998, Mr Litvinenko first came to prominence by exposing an alleged plot to assassinate the then powerful tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who himself now lives in self-imposed exile in the UK.

Mr Litvinenko was subsequently arrested on charges of abusing his office, and spent nine months in a remand centre before being acquitted.

Later he wrote Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, in which he said that it was FSB agents and not Chechen rebels who carried out the apartment block bombings.

The attacks helped swing public opinion behind Russia's second war in the breakaway Chechen republic, which began with a huge Russian military offensive later that year.

BBC
 

quote:

 
Litvinenko came under Berezovsky's influence in the 1990s when the businessman was a powerful figure in the Kremlin and was locked in a power struggle with the head of the FSB, said Mr Khinstein.

The Guardian
 

quote:

Op vrijdag 24 november 2006 19:55 schreef Cyclonis het volgende:
ik sluit op zich niet uit dat de russische regering erachter zit, maar je kan de argumenten ook op een andere manier bekijken

als Putin zo untouchable is, waarom zou hij zich dan iets aantrekken van een journaliste die zich al jaren negatief uit over Putin, maar nog niet zijn populariteit omlaag gehaald? waarom zou hij haar juist vermoorden wat zijn populariteit zeker omlaag haalt, zelfs als niet bewezen wordt dat hij erachter zit, maar het speculeren juist voldoende is?

volgens mij wil je als machthebber je critici juist extra beschermen, want als ze op de een of andere manier vermoord worden dan gaat iedereen logischerwijs jou meteen verdenken en gaat je populariteit omlaag en wordt juist bevestigd wat je critici al die tijd zeggen.

kortom, het lijkt tegenstrijdig, maar het beste wat je kan doen om een criticus het zwijgen op te leggen als hij het heeft over jouw ondemocratische wijze, is juist om hem zoveel mogelijk te laten praten. als je hem uit de weg ruimt, wordt zijn punt juist alleen maar bewezen

just my 2 cents

quote:

Op zaterdag 25 november 2006 11:38 schreef 6833-228 het volgende:

[..]

Daar sluit ik me bij aan. Ik sluit zeker niet uit dat Rusland er zelf achter zit, maar het blijft vreemd.
Dat is ook wat Putin zelf zei: De dood van Politkovskaya en Litvinenko heeft er veel meer voor gezorgd dat Rusland en de Russische bezetting van Tsjetsjenie in een negatief daglicht is komen te staan in het Westen, dan Politkovskaya en Litvinenko ooit levend voor elkaar hadden kunnen krijgen.

quote:

 
And the former KGB officer (Putin) has shown that he intends to use these resources to restore pride in Russia, which suffered in the years after the downfall of communism.

The bad news for Britain is that two of our largest oil companies, BP and Shell, which between them have invested more than £10 billion in Russia, are in the firing line as Putin attempts to get Russia a larger slice of the action.

Daily Mail
 

quote:

 
Gerard Batten MEP - Strasbourg 3.4.06

03-04-2006


One of my constituents, Alexander Litvinenko, was formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the Russian Federation's FSB, the successor to the KGB.

Mr Litvinenko's exposure of illegal FSB activities forced him to seek political asylum abroad.

Before deciding on a place of refuge he consulted his friend, General Anatoly Trofimov, a former Deputy Chief of the FSB.

General Trofimov reportedly said to Mr Litvinenko, "Don't go to Italy, there are many KGB agents among the politicians: Romano Prodi is our man there."

In February 2006 Mr Litvinenko reported this information to Mario Scaramella of the Guzzanti Commission investigating KGB penetration of Italian politics.

This allegation against a former head of the European Commission is one of the utmost seriousness. It should be thoroughly investigated. The European Parliament should conduct its own investigation.
 

quote:

Op zaterdag 25 november 2006 20:01 schreef Dante_A het volgende:


Waarom is nou net déze man vermoord. Deze man die in de Londonse anti-Putin alliantie niet heel populair was en een beetje een buitenbeentje tussen de grotere en actievere mensen. Is hij misschien door 'mensen-die-hem-konden-missen' uit het anti-Putin kamp in London vermoord om Putin in een kwaad daglicht te stellen? Dan is een lang sterfbed van 23 dagen juist heel handig.

quote:

Op zaterdag 25 november 2006 20:22 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
Dat hij een buitenbeentje was is zeker en zijn geloofwaardigheid werd er natuurlijk ook niet beter op (zie dit Prodi-verhaal). Misschien verloor hij zijn nut en heeft hij op deze manier "zijn doel gediend"? Zou kunnen.

quote:

Op zondag 26 november 2006 03:46 schreef XXVIII het volgende:

[..]

quote:

 
Murdered Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko passed documents to former Yukos CEO in Israel months before his death - report

November 25, 2006, 9:10 AM (GMT+02:00)

Leonid Nevzlin, former CEO of the oil giant and current chairman of the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, says the former Russian spy came to Israel with classified documents on Yukos which may be damaging to Russian leaders. Nevzliln estimates that Litvinenko’s death was connected with this information, which he has handed to London police investigators of the murder.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources add that the Russian ex-spy is believed to have been a double agent, who sold trade secrets to different parties in and outside Russia, among them some of the Russian oligarchs living in exile in the West. Livinenko served as a colonel in a Russian Federal Security Services unit which investigated and carried out special operations against businessmen.

British police found traces of the radioactive Polonium 210 in Litvinenko’s urine.

The London media accuse Vladimir Putin of being behind the murder which they claim was politically-motivated.

quote:

Op zondag 26 november 2006 03:46 schreef XXVIII het volgende:

[..]

Indien inderdaad de FSB of een andere inlichtintingsdienst hem vanwege de informatie die hij zou bezitten uit de weg zou willen ruimen, dan waren er toch wel snellere manieren dan vergiftiging door middel van een hoogst radioactieve stof?

quote:

 
So, case closed? I mean, all the evidence would seem to point to Putin as the cause of Litvinenko's untimely demise. Well, no, actually. Thinking logically about it, or rather, thinking 'conspiratorially' about it (since this is, after all, a very clear case of conspiracy) it is far more plausible that Litvinenko's murder was carried out by an enemy of Putin. As with all cloak and dagger cases, in the absence of any empirical evidence, the closest approximation to the truth is generally achieved by asking "who benefits?"

Consider how utterly masochistic the Putin government would have to be to murder a man who had been publicly attacking Putin himself. Consider further how amazingly crass it is for Putin, having supposedly decided that Litvinenko had to be "taken care of" to opt for a method of assassination that was absolutely certain of being identified as poisoning. Has the Russian SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) never heard of "accidental death"? What about a "heart attack"? For god's sake, even pushing the man under a number 9 bus would have been less obvious than poisoning him with an "extremely rare radioactive isotope".

Litvinenko - By Way Of Deception
 

quote:

Op zondag 26 november 2006 04:15 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:

[..]

Ik kwam dit vandaag nog tegen
[..]

Bij mij komt langzaam het beeld van een opportunist naar voren. Iemand die zich op probeerde te werken (en lekker veel geld te verdienen) door over beide partijen de nodige 'dirt' te hebben.
[..]

Precies, een ongelukje is zo gebeurd toch? Waarom zouden ze hem weken lang langzaam laten wegteren zodat er een groot mediacircus van gemaakt kon worden?

Enige alternatieve antwoord is dat Moskou een daad wou stellen als waarschuwing. Maar dat spreekt me persoonlijk niet zo aan. Dan had het evengoed stilletjes kunnen gebeuren, dan komt de boodschap evengoed wel aan.
[..]

quote:

Op vrijdag 24 november 2006 13:10 schreef poldergeist het volgende:
Dit topic is bedoeld voor discussie rondom de dood van de Russische oud-KGB'er Aleksander Litvinenko en journaliste Anna Politovskaja. Beiden kritici van Poetin en beide op mysterieuze wijze gestorven.

Maar waarom, wat zou Poetin in de doofpot willen stoppen? Die vraag spookt door mijn hoofd.
Ik zou graag posts willen lezen van mensen die er meer over weten.

quote:

Litvinenko also suggested the 2004 Beslan school siege may have been carried out on FSB orders. In addition, he has alleged that Russian special services were behind the 2004 assassination in Qatar of former acting Chechen Republic Ichkeria President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.
http://www.rferl.org/feat(...)60-42f670f8f15b.html

quote:

A. Litvinenko: "The identities of the terrorists prove 100% the participation of the FSB in the seizure of the school in Beslan"

But it's 100% sure that Chechens who are arrested for terrorism and participation in bandit formations don't have other ways to freedom than to flee or to be recruited.

http://halldor2.blogspot.com/2004/09/litvinenko-on-beslan.html

quote:

Anna Politkovskaya: Putin, poison and my struggle for freedom.

She has been poisoned by men she suspects worked for Russia's secret service and held in a pit in Chechnya for three days by men she knows for certain worked for the successor of the KGB.
http://www.russianlondon.com/print/22428/

quote:

In what has recently become an alarming trend in Russia, Politkovskaya’s death is the third such high profile assassination this month alone. A quick scan of the Committee to Protect Journalists website, cpj.org, will reveal that since Putin’s assumption of the Russian presidency, over 14 journalists have been abducted or murdered, and none of these cases have been resolved. Many of these journalists had been critical of Russian policies.
http://www.stanfordreview(...)4/World/world1.shtml

quote:

Litvinenko said he had two meetings on the day he first felt ill. In the morning, he met at a London hotel with an unnamed Russian and Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB colleague and bodyguard to one-time Russian Prime Minster Yegor Gaidar. Later, he dined with Italian security expert Mario Scaramella to discuss the October murder of another Kremlin critic — investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi(...)ional/i011728S43.DTL

quote:

Russia's Gaidar ill in hospital with mystery ailment

By Guy Faulconbridge
Reuters
Wednesday, November 29, 2006; 6:04 AM

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Yegor Gaidar, architect of Russia's market reforms, was being treated in a Moscow hospital on Wednesday after coming close to death with a mystery ailment during a visit to Ireland, friends and family said.

Gaidar, 50, who unleashed economic shock therapy before the dust had settled on the ruins of the Soviet Union, fell unconscious with unexplained symptoms on November 24 during a visit to Dublin to present his new book -- Death of the Empire.

"He lost consciousness for three hours and was taken to intensive care for a long time where doctors were fearful for his life," Gaidar's daughter Maria, an opposition activist, told Reuters.

"He is in Moscow and doctors are trying to come up with a diagnosis but they can't find one. His condition is satisfactory and he is speaking but he looks very bad -- he looks pale and thin."

[...]

"Yegor Gaidar on 24 November was in the balance between life and death. Could this be simply some sort of natural illness? According to what the most professional doctors, who have first- hand knowledge of the situation, say: No," Chubais said.

[...]

Chubais, target of an assassination attempt in 2005, made a link between Gaidar's illness and the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead last month in Moscow, and Litvinenko's death.

"For me there is no doubt that the deathly chain Politkovskaya-Litvinenko-Gaidar, which miraculously was not finished, would have been extremely attractive for the supporters of an unconstitutional, forceful change of power in Russia," said Chubais.

quote:

Suleiman Kerimov Badly Injured in Car Wreck

Suleiman Kerimov, the Russian businessman listed by Forbes as the 72nd richest person in the world, was seriously injured on Saturday in an automobile accident in Nice, France. He lost control of his Ferrari Enzo, which struck a tree at an enormous speed and burst into flames, as he was traveling from the local airport toward the city center. Kerimov was taken by helicopter to the regional burn center at Hopital de la Conception in Marseille. He is now on artificial respiration.

[...]

Kerimov is a member of the Russian State Duma, deputy chairman of the Committee on Physical Fitness, Sports and Youth Affairs, and a member of the LDPR faction. LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky called the incident "a usual traffic accident" and said that Kerimov would receive "due attention." "If it had been an explosion, you could think that it was something like murder… This is a usual traffic accident, a purely technical moment, chance, and nothing more," Zhirinovsky said. He suggested that the cause of the accident was "objective." "There may have been sun. Maybe he could have been putting on sunglasses and was poorly oriented. We have to wait for information from the French police about what really happened. Maybe the car was defective. We don't know anything," he said.



Several Russian media outlets are speculating that a popular Russian TV hostess, Tina Kandelaki, was in the passenger seat of the vehicle with Suleyman Kerimov. According to local hospital records she was treated and then quickly released with only minor injuries. Tina Kandelaki is married to a prominent Moscow businessman, Andrei Kondrahin, who has refused to comment. Mrs. Kandelaki is now in Moscow and has issued a statement declaring that she even wasn’t in France at the time of the accident. Mrs. Kandelaki claims that she has been at home sick for several days with the mumps. [BRON]

quote:

 
Nov 16 2006 11:22AM

Russian-UK deal may help Berezovsky, Zakayev extradition - prosecutor

MOSCOW. Nov 16 (Interfax) - Moscow believes that the signing of a memorandum on mutual understanding between the Russian and British prosecution authorities would help more promptly resolve problems surrounding extradition, including that of prominent businessman Boris Berezovsky and Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev, who currently reside in London.

"After signing this memorandum, we will be able to contact our British counterparts more easily and quickly and bring up issues related to extradition, including that of the individuals in question [Berezovsky and Zakayev]," Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Zvyagintsev, who signed the document on cooperation in London on Wednesday, said in an interview published in the Thursday issue of Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

"The extradition requests related to them are still on the table," Zvyagintsev said.

"I believe the signing of the memorandum will also help us combat terrorism and transnational crime jointly and more effectively," he said.
 

quote:

Op woensdag 29 november 2006 16:49 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
Dat verhaal is in de wereld gebracht door John Henry.

"Firstly, Litvinenko wasn't poisoned with thallium. That suggestion came from John Henry, a toxicologist who was approached by the office of Boris Berezovsky to give his opinion on the case, and who readily did so, despite not yet having seen the test results of Litvinenko. He later withdrew his comments."
"From this speculation based on faulty testimony, Barnett has already concluded that the Putin regime is responsible."

The British Public is Being Taken for a Ride

quote:

"I don't know anything about police at my office."

quote:

Detectives were also searching the offices of a security and risk management company in Grosvenor Street, in the West End of London, where traces of polonium 210 have been found. A spokesman for the company, Erinys, said it had alerted police because Mr Litvinenko had visited its offices on a "totally unrelated" matter some time before he was admitted to hospital. He added: "None of our staff with whom he had contact have suffered any ill effects."

quote:

FAKT: Alexander, who, in your opinion, is the originator of this [London] terrorist attack?

A. Litvinenko: You know, I have spoken about it earlier and I shall say now, that I know only one organization that has made terrorism the main tool of solving political problems. It is the Russian special services.

FAKT: Every terrorist you have named is from 'the old staff' of the KGB. Could you name someone from recent history?

A. Litvinenko: Certainly, here it is. The number two person in the terrorist organization al Qaeda, who they are crediting with the series of explosions in London, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is an old agent of the FSB.

A. Litvinenko: I can. During my service in one of the most secret departments of the FSB, top officials from the UFSB of Dagestan, who had directly worked with Ayman al-Zawahiri ... were called to Moscow and received high posts.


If you ever hear that Arab terrorists have attacked an American city with nuclear weapons don't believe it." The attack, he said, would be from Russia.

http://www.jrnyquist.com/nyquist_2005_0813.htm

quote:

Op woensdag 29 november 2006 21:12 schreef Resonancer het volgende:
Litvinenko had dossier overname Yukos
http://www.telegraaf.nl/buitenland/article54304011.ece?cid=rss
[..]

Zou 9-11 dan 'n wapenfeit m.b.t de koude oorlog zijn?

quote:

In an interview with The Independent shortly after the poisoning became public, Mr Scaramella said that Mr Litvinenko, a friend and professional contact since 2001, told him he had masterminded the smuggling of radioactive material to Zurich in 2000. There have long been concerns that turmoil in Russia and other former Soviet states after the fall of Communism created an international black market in radioactive substances.

The operation would have been one of the last carried out by Mr Litvinenko while still an FSB officer, in a unit tackling organised crime and smuggling. He fled Russia for London that year after the FSB began investigating him for corruption - charges which he claimed were invented as revenge for his decision to expose an FSB plot to assassinate the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

[...]

Mr Scaramella has denied any involvement in his friend's death and derided suggestions that he was himself a Russian agent.He claims that he has long been involved in investigating the smuggling of radioactive material by the KGB and its successors. He claimed last year that Soviet destroyers had laid 20 nuclear torpedoes in the Bay of Naples in 1970, where they remain.

quote:

 
Was the use of polonium to kill Litvinenko a clue to the identity of the killer or killers?

There is increasing evidence that the radioactive poisoning assassination of ex-KGB and FSB agent and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko was the result of a plot by anti-Vladimir Putin criminal syndicates based in Britain, Israel, Ukraine, and Poland to embarrass the Russian government.

Suspicions about the role of the exiled Russian-Israeli criminal syndicates in the poisoning of Litvinenko, including that headed by Litvinenko's friend, wanted oligarch Boris Berezovsky, re-surfaced after former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar became violently ill after eating breakfast at a conference he was attending in Dublin, Ireland. Ireland's banking secrecy laws has made it a favorite location for the Russian-Israeli Mafia.

Gaidar's sudden illness occurred a day after Litvinenko died in a London hospital from poisoning from polonium-210, a deadly radioactive isotope when ingested. Radioactive traces were later discovered at sites around London, including Berezovsky's offices in the West End.

Gaidar was moved from a Dublin hospital to a Moscow hospital where he received a telephone call from Putin wishing him a speedy recovery. Putin's Mafiosi critics in Britain, Israel, Moscow, and other countries have accused the Russian leader of poisoning Litvinenko and attempting to kill Gaidar.

However, Russian officials are claiming that the attacks were carried out by Putin's criminal opponents who want to create tension between Moscow and the West.

Their arguments appear to have merit when the choice of radioactive isotope used to kill Litvinenko is considered. Intelligence experts point out that polonium was discovered by Marie Curie (nee Maria Sklodowska) in 1897 and named after her native homeland Poland (Polonia in Latin) to express her support for Polish independence against its partition by Russia, Prussia and Austria.


Was someone allied to Russian-Israeli mob sending a message by killing Litvinenko with radioactive substance named in honor of Polish independence by native Polish nationalist Marie Curie?

Before Putin moved in to take over Yukos Oil from the Russian criminal syndicates, there were plans to build a Russian-German gas pipeline through Poland. After Poland was taken over by a neo-con team of identical twins Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who serve as President and Prime Minister, respectively, Poland not only began to conduct a witch hunt against ex-Communists but also became a base of operations for the anti-Putin Russian-Israeli exiled gangsters and oligarchs. Named as Defense Minister was former American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Radek Sikorski, who also happens to be married to Washington Post editorial board member and leading neo-con journalist Anne Applebaum, also a leading critic of Putin (along with a number of so-called "liberals," including Clinton ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke).

After Putin decided, along with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, to bypass Poland and build the Russo-German pipeline under the Baltic Sea, Sikorski unleashed a barrage against Russia and Germany. He likened the pipeline deal to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement that carved up Eastern Europe, including Poland, between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Sikorski asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel to cancel the pipeline deal but she refused.

We now know that Litvinenko was working on unspecified "energy issues" in London. We also know he has been described as a Russian-Israeli "double agent" and was reported to have transferred classified Russian documents in Yukos to a Russian-Israeli exiled oligarch in Tel Aviv. Double agents are always in danger from the party they are working against. Litvinenko's killers' use of polonium, named by Marie Curie in support of Polish independence, may mean that the assassins are more likely found in Warsaw's Russian-Israeli mob infested intelligence apparatus than in the Kremlin.
 

quote:

Op donderdag 30 november 2006 21:41 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
Een moord op zo'n manier plegen is duidelijk een demonstratie ergens van. Anders doe je het veel minder opvallend. Laat je iemand een 'ongelukje' krijgen, een plotselinge 'hartaanval' of 'zelfmoord' plegen.

Hoeveel symboliek zit erin?

Polonium is ontdekt en benoemd door Marie Curie. Ze noemde de isotoop naar Polen (polonium is Polen in het latijn) om steun te geven aan de Poolse onafhankelijkheidsbeweging.

Zou het Kremlin een symbool kiezen dat juist het verlies van de Russische invloedssfeer en de Poolse onafhankelijkheid benadrukt?

Aardig artikel van Wayne Madsen Report
[..]

quote:

NIO: It still seems like such an exotic property to choose, though.
KKT: Well, there's plenty of polonium-210 available - any place there's a bomb-maintenance facility - and it's always manufactured. It is a sophisticated thing to know that polonium-210 is dangerous, but that's been known because it did a lot of harm to people throughout the Manhattan Project.

Beyond that, I have no idea. I was surprised that somebody was clever enough to look for polonium-210 during the investigation. If you were looking for alpha emitters, there is a diagnostic energy for polonium-210 no one would mistake. But the act of looking into that shows some insight into what might have been used, and I have no idea how they got that insight. Maybe they knew something about this person or the people he hung around with.

quote:

British intelligence sources increasingly suspect that Alexander Litvinenko, the former spy killed with a radioactive poison, was the victim of a plot involving "rogue elements" within the Russian state, the Guardian has learned.
While ruling out any official involvement by Vladimir Putin's government, investigators believe that only those with access to state nuclear laboratories could have mounted such a sophisticated plot.

Police were last night closing in on a group of men who entered the UK among a large crowd of Muscovite football fans. The group of five or more arrived shortly before Mr Litvinenko fell ill and attended the CSKA Moscow match against Arsenal at the Emirates stadium on November 1. They flew back shortly afterwards. While describing them only as witnesses, police believe their presence could hold the key to the former spy's death.

[...]

It was reported that the levels of radiation were highest in the toilets of the Millennium Hotel in London, where Mr Litvinenko had a meeting shortly before falling ill. These levels were above the safe public dose limit, according to Channel 4 News. There were also traces at the Itsu sushi bar, where he went later, but they were far lower.

[...]

Explaining the increasing belief that Mr Litvinenko's death involved Russian state elements, one official said yesterday: "Only the state would have access to that material".

Officials now go so far as to say that the involvement of individuals within the FSB in the affair is "probable". But they insist that it is far from definite and the evidence is still circumstantial.

[...]

Police sources said the searches of the three grounded aircraft were all part of the investigation into the movements of the key group of witnesses who entered the country with football fans.

Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB spy who met Mr Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel on November 1, has said that he was on a London-bound flight from Moscow on October 31 with his family and some friends. The group attended the Arsenal-CSK Moscow match the next day.

The second man who was at the meeting in the hotel, Dmitri Kovtun, arrived in London early on November 1 on a flight from Hamburg. Both men returned to Moscow together on the same flight on November 3.

Mr Kovtun said yesterday they had both contacted British police after waiting in vain to be contacted by detectives. "We got in touch with them ourselves, and they thanked us," he said. But he has not been asked to give a statement.

Mr Kovtun said both he and Mr Lugovoi had been tested for any signs that they had been in contact with radioactive substances and were waiting for the results.

Both have vigorously denied any involvement in the poisoning.

[The Guardian]

quote:

Letters 'revealed secret hit squad'
[...]

The letters include one to Mr Litvinenko which he never received, as well as one to his friend Mr Goldfarb. In the message to Mr Litvinenko on November 20, Mr Trepashkin recalls a conversation in August 2002 in which he warned Mr Litvinenko - already living in London - that he and his family were at risk from the FSB.

Mr Trepashkin tells his friend that he had met an FSB contact near a railway station in Russia who told him that a "very serious group" had been set up, which "will knock out all those associated with Berezovsky and Litvinenko".

The letter says that Mr Trepashkin was urged to co-operate with the group and provide information on Mr Litvinenko and members of his family. Mr Goldfarb said the other letter, addressed to him and written on November 25, detailed an offer to be a witness in the British investigation.

Mr Goldfarb, who says that he can attest to the authenticity of the handwriting, said he had immediately passed the letters to police. Scotland Yard said that it could not confirm specific details on the investigation.

"This continues to be an extremely complex investigation and detectives are pursuing many lines of inquiries," a spokesman said, adding: "I think it is significant because it shows that there was an FSB group set up back in 2002 that targeted Litvinenko and Berezovsky."

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

quote:

According to an account by BBC International Monitoring, originally from an Italian source, in 2004 Scaramella brought to the attention of Italian police an attempt to smuggle highly enriched uranium into Italy:

quote:

[...]

When Mr Litvinenko became ill, Mr Scaramella came forward to explain how he had met the former KGB officer at the Itsu sushi bar in London to discuss a hit-list of Russian critics, mentioning Mr Litvinenko. They had first met when Mr Scaramella brought Mr Litvinenko to Italy in 2004 to testify to the Mitrokhin Commission, set up in 2001 to investigate KGB activities in Italy during and after the Cold War.

Mr Scaramella later told Italian authorities that Mr Litvinenko told him of an arms shipment coming to Italy, to be used in assassination attempts against him and Senator Paolo Guzzanti, who was chairing the commission.

Yesterday the Italian newspaper La Repubblica claimed the academic was under investigation for smuggling weapons between the former Soviet Union and Italy. It detailed how police in his home town, Naples, had been looking into the consulting work Mr Scaramella had carried out with Mr Guzzanti while working on the Mitrokhin Commission.

The newspaper alleged that police became suspicious as Mr Scaramella was said to have "detailed information", down to the route of the truck carrying the weapons.

It claimed police intercepted conversations with Mr Litvinenko discussing arms shipments from the former Soviet Union. They also intercepted conversations with another Russian secret service defector Euvgenij Limarev - the source of the e-mail hit-list shown to Mr Litvinenko.

La Repubblica claimed that magistrates asked Italian intelligence whether Mr Scaramella was working for them and were told he was not - though they could not be sure he was not working for another department. The article quoted sources who believed Mr Scaramella and his organisation, the Environmental Crime Prevention Programme, were CIA funded.

Mr Scaramella's lawyer says he has been told of no investigation and that he is happy to co-operate with magistrates.
What is known is that information on Mr Scaramella is difficult to come by. When Naples University - where he has been said to be based - has refused to say whether he works there.

In a 2004 interview with La Repubblica, he said he was a security expert trained in England, France and Belgium, was 36 and had two children.
He also said he had held a post at San Jose University in the United States and had been recruited by the CIA to go to Colombia to research links between Russian spies and drug trafficking.

On 13 March, 2004, while he was a consultant for the inquiry into alleged links between the KGB and the leftist Italian militants the Red Brigades, he was caught in gunfire between police and Mafia.

Information about the Environmental Crime Prevention Programme, which Mr Scaramella is said to head, is also scarce.
Nick Pisa, the first British journalist to interview Mr Scaramella following the Litvinenko poisoning, said: "The one thing I could not shake from my mind was how he spoke English with a slight Russian accent - being of southern Italian background myself I can recognise a Neapolitan accent and Professor Scaramella had no trace of one when he spoke English.

"His mannerisms were not like those of a typical southern Italian - there was very little hand waving and excitable chatter.

"Two days later, he held his now infamous press conference in Rome where he shattered illusions of James Bond style espionage by revealing he had eaten at Pizza Hut before meeting Litvinenko. Again this to me seemed strange - a true Neapolitan would never dream of having pizza anywhere but Naples, let alone set foot in Pizza Hut.
There are lots of things that just don't add up.

It crossed my mind he may be a fantasist who likes to talk the talk, but now I'm not so sure. My firm belief is that he is a spy, but who for, exactly, is the question."

Yet a bright light was shone on the relationship between Mr Scaramella and Mr Litvinenko, who was quoted in a previously unpublished interview as saying that he believed the professor threatened to have his brother evicted from Italy in order to secure his testimony before the commission.

He described how Mr Scaramella had paid for his flight and hotel expenses to give evidence.
Mr Litvinenko said: "We arranged that I would come to Italy in February 2004. Then around that time something unexplainable happened. I have a brother called Maxim who has lived in Italy for four years. A month before I was due to arrive Maxim called me in a desperate state.

"The police no longer recognised his education visa and were going to expel him and send him back to Russia, which meant certain death. I asked Mario for help. He said not to worry and that [prime minister Silvio] Berlusconi had taken a personal interest in my information and that it would be sorted out and Maxim had nothing to worry about.

"I gave the commission all the help they wanted and Maxim was given political asylum. Maxim told me Mario had gone to the police station in Rimini and spoken to the police. I'm certain the whole thing was done to convince me to co-operate.''

Now it is Mr Scaramella who is co-operating with Scotland Yard, which, according to a close friend of the professor, is housing him in a castle. Mr Scaramella is said to have commented: "They are treating me like the Prince of Wales."
They are also treating him like a potential key to the case. The question many people will be asking is whether he is a victim or a possible perpetrator.

[...]

[BRON]

quote:

Edward Jay Epstein: Question of the Day

Question:
Do we really know whether or not he was murdered?

Answer:
Alexander Litvinenko's died from exposure to radioactive Polonium-210 in London on November 23, 2006. Even though there was too much Polonium 210 in Litvinenko’s body for the radioactive isotope to have occurred naturally, the British health authorities were unable to determine how the man-made substance "entered his body," and with typical British understatement classified it merely as a "suspicious death." At issue was how, by design or accident, he came to be in such close proximity to a deadly radioactive isotope.

There are two hypotheses that could account for this fatal Polonium 210 contamination:
1) The murder hypothesis: Someone surreptitiously sprinkled particles of Polonium 210 on his food.
2) The accident hypothesis: Polonium210 particles escaped from a vial, envelope, or other container that he was carrying.

The media initially fastened on the murder hypothesis after it erroneously reported that Litvinenko had been given the rat poison Thallium and then speculated that the motive for the murder was to prevent him from disclosing information about criminal deeds of the Russian government. Even after it turned out (three weeks later) that the cause of death was not Thallium, but Polonium 210, the murder hypothesis continued to gain traction. Polonium 210, however, has very different attributes from Thallium as a murder weapon. For one thing, unlike Thallium which can kill over night, Polonium 210, takes weeks to kill. (Litvinenko, in fact, lived-- and talked to the media-- for three weeks.) So it is not efficient if the purpose is to silence a victim. Moreover, as the particles persists for months, it leave tell-tale trail of radioactivity, and it can even be traced back to the lab that produced it.

Police investigators traced the Polonium 210 to at least six locations that Litvinenko reportedly visited on November 1st: 1) his own home, 2) the offices of billionaire Russian exile Boris Berezovsky (his sometime employer) 3) the headquarters of business intelligence company Erinys, 4)the Itsu sushi restaurant, where he had lunch with Italian "defense consultant" Mario Scaramella 5) the Millennium hotel, where he with the two Russian businessmen, and finally, 7) the Barnet General Hospital where he was admitted that evening. Two other people also got contaminated with Polonium 210-- Litvinenko's wife and his lunch partner Scaramella. The common link in this contamination patter is Litvinenko. According to the murder theory, the assassin would have had to sprinkle the Polonium onto Litvinenko's food at the earliest contaminated location and Litvinenko himself would have contaminated the subsequent locations with low-level traces of Polonium 210 that oozed out of his body. The problem here is that Scaramella got contaminated at Itsu Sushi– the only place he met with Litvinenko before he was hospitalized-- which, according to medical experts, could have only came from his exposure to a primary source (and not Litvinenko's secondary oozings), yet the strength of the Polonium 210 at the Millennium Hotel, which Litvinenko visited before going to the Itsu Sushi, reportedly was too strong to have come from Litvinenko's excretions (Daily UK Telegraph December 1,2006). If so, the primary Polonium 210 container--presumably a vial or envelope-- was present at least two locations that Litvinenko visited, and since Litvinenko was the only person known to be at both locations, it would suggest that Litvinenko himself had the container of polonium 210 at both the Sushi bar to the hotel. In addition, the date that the headquarters of Erinys may have been well before the contamination of the Sushi bar and the hotel. According to Andrei Lugovoi, the ex-KGB associate whom he met with at the Millennium Hotel, "Alexander Litvinenko, my business partner Dmitry Kovtun and I were in London on October 17 at a meeting in the office of (private security company) Erinys." Since traces of Polonium 210 cannot be dated, the contamination of those offices could have occurred two weeks before Litvinenko was poisoned. If so, either Litvinenko or his associates in this unknown business had a container of Polonium 210.

The accident hypothesis , which also has problems, would explain the radiation from a primary source at two locations, or radiation traces that predated Litvinenko's poisoning. It posits that Litvinenko had a vial of smuggled Polonium, which through damage or an accident in transferring it to another contained, leaked onto Litvinenko's clothing or person.. Polonium 210 is a valuable commodity in any gram-size quantity. Among its more nefarious uses, it can be used to control a chain-reaction in an early-stage clandestine nuclear weapons programs. Iraq, for example, in 1990 had investigated using polonium 210, as an initiator for a crude U-235 bomb. ( Polonium 210 traces were also found by IAEA inspectors on Iranian nuclear components in 2000. ). It may be relevant here that Mario Scaramella told authorities that Litvinenko's past interests had included the "smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia." That was for the KGB. If so, he might have a host of reasons for possessing a smuggled sample of Polonium 210, ranging from establishing the bona fides of someone claiming to have access to a Russian nuclear facility to investigating the traffic in components for nukes. He or his associates might also be acting as an intermediary in its sale.
Either hypothesis is possible. Why rush to judgment before the results of the inquest?

quote:

Op zondag 3 december 2006 13:09 schreef 6833-228 het volgende:

[...]

Een andere theorie die niet veel genoemd wordt maar eigenlijk heel goed mogelijk is, zeker gezien de berichten over de smokkel van nucleair materiaal door Scaramella en Litvinenko in het verlden, is die dat Litvinenko nog steeds nucleair materiaal smokkelde en dat er hierbij een ongeluk is gebeurd.

quote:

 
Revealed: Litvinenko's Russian 'blackmail plot'

The FBI has been dragged into the investigation of Alexander Litvinenko's death after details emerged that he had planned to make tens of thousands of pounds blackmailing senior Russian spies and business figures.



'He told me he was going to blackmail or sell sensitive information about all kinds of powerful people, including oligarchs, corrupt officials and sources in the Kremlin,'
 

quote:

Op zondag 3 december 2006 21:04 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:

[..]

Vind ik niet vergezocht.

Overigens zijn er ook sporen van polonium aangetroffen in een hotel dat Litvinenko bezocht had voor hij naar het sushi restaurant was gegaan.

Dus de theorie dat hij in het restaurant vergiftigd is kan ook het raam uit.

quote:

Dit stond vandaag in The Guardian.
[..]

Hij gebruikte zijn info dus om jan en alleman te chanteren.

Wil iedereen met een motief om Litvinenko te vermoorden even een nummertje trekken?

quote:

Dead Russian spy to be buried as a Muslim
Philippe Naughton

Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian intelligence agent poisoned in London, is to be buried according to Muslim tradition after converting to Islam on his deathbed.

The spy's father, Walter Litvinenko, said in an interview published today that his son - who was born an Orthodox Christian but had close links to Islamist rebels in Chechnya - made the request as he lay dying in University College Hospital.

"He said ’I want to be buried according to Muslim tradition’," Mr Litvinenko told Moscow's Kommersant daily.

"I said, ’Well son, as you wish. We already have one Muslim in our family - my daughter is married to a Muslim. The important thing is to believe in the Almighty. God is one.’"

Nine Scotland Yard detectives were preparing to fly to Moscow as early as today to speak to witnesses who met Litvinenko around the time of his poisoning, which is believed to have happened on November 1 at a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly.

The Russian foreign ministry confirmed today that visas had been issued to the investigators and the prosecutor-general's office also offered "to provide all necessary help to British colleagues within the framework of international agreements and the law of the Russian Federation".

In a statement dictated on his deathbed, Litvinenko, a former agent for the KGB and its successor body, the FSB, accused President Putin of involvement in his death. "You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life," he said.

The spy's father told Kommersant, an independent business daily, that he was also sure that Mr Putin was involved in the death, dismissing suggestions that rogue former agents may have been responsible.

"No kind of veterans organisation would dare to kill a former secret service member. There was an order right from the top to kill my son," Mr Litvinenko said. "I am in no doubt that this was done by members of the Russian secret services, with the permission of Vladimir Putin."

Russian authorities have denied any involvement in Litvinenko’s death.

Meanwhile, one of Litvinenko's former KGB colleagues, Yuri Shvets, said that he had given Scotland Yard information on the death, including the name of the man responsible for the murder.

"The truth is, we have an act of international terrorism on our hands. I happen to believe I know who is behind the death of my friend Sasha and the reason for his murder," Mr Shvets told the Associated Press.

Mr Shvets, who had known Litvinenko since 2002 and last spoke to him on the day that he died, was questioned by British detectives and an FBI agent in Washington last week. He declined to confirm the name of the person he had told police was behind Litvinenko’s death in case it disrupted the investigation.

"I want this inquiry to get to the bottom of it. Otherwise they will be killing people all over the world - in London, in Washington and in other places," Mr Shvets said. "I want to give the police the time and space to crack this case, to allow them to find those behind this assassination, the last thing I want to do is give a warning to those who are responsible."

Litvinenko, 43, died three weeks after ingesting a toxic radioactive isotope, polonium-210, which made his hair fall out and ravaged his organs. Results of the post-mortem examination on his body are expected later this week and might help pinpoint the origin of the radioactive substance.

An Italian contact who had lunch with Litvinenko at the sushi restaurant, Mario Scaramella, was also contaminated with polonium, although he has shown no symptoms of radiation poisoning.

In an interview with Italy’s RAI television, Mr Scaramella said that doctors had told him that his body contained five times the dose of polonium-210 that would normally be considered lethal. "So my mood isn’t the best," he told the channel.

quote:

Op maandag 4 december 2006 18:44 schreef Roi het volgende:
Het gerucht dat hij zich had bekeerd tot de Islam blijkt waar.
[..]

TimesOnline

quote:

Op maandag 4 december 2006 18:44 schreef Roi het volgende:
Het gerucht dat hij zich had bekeerd tot de Islam blijkt waar.
[..]

TimesOnline

quote:

In a statement dictated on his deathbed, Litvinenko, a former agent for the KGB and the FSB, accused President Putin of involvement in his death. "You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life," he said.

The spy's father told Kommersant, an independent business daily, that he was also sure that Mr Putin was involved in the death, dismissing suggestions that rogue former agents may have been responsible.

"No kind of veteran’s organisation would dare to kill a former secret service member. There was an order right from the top to kill my son," Mr Litvinenko said. "I am in no doubt that this was done by members of the Russian secret services, with the permission of Vladimir Putin."

quote:

Meanwhile, one of Litvinenko's former KGB colleagues, Yuri Shvets, said that he had given Scotland Yard information on the death, including the name of the man responsible for the murder.

"The truth is, we have an act of international terrorism on our hands. I happen to believe I know who is behind the death of my friend Sasha and the reason for his murder," Mr Shvets told the Associated Press.

Mr Shvets, who had known Litvinenko since 2002 and last spoke to him on the day that he died, was questioned by British detectives and an FBI agent in Washington last week. He declined to confirm the name of the person he had told police was behind Litvinenko’s death in case it disrupted the investigation.

"I want this inquiry to get to the bottom of it. Otherwise they will be killing people all over the world - in London, in Washington and in other places," Mr Shvets said. "I want to give the police the time and space to crack this case, to allow them to find those behind this assassination, the last thing I want to do is give a warning to those who are responsible."

quote:

Op dinsdag 5 december 2006 01:04 schreef OpenYourMind het volgende:

[..]

[speculatie modus]
Misschien zijn het wel juist de oligarchen die hem vermoord hebben met zijn eigen smokkelwaar en het daarna gebruiken als een anti-Putin campagne.
[/speculatie modus]

quote:

Version One: Litvinenko somehow acquired smuggled polonium-210 and wanted to earn from the transaction. On November 1, he left traces of radiation everywhere he was, including the office of exiled Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky, a key wheeler and dealer of the Yeltsin era. None of the men he met that day has shown signs of illness.

Scaramella said his friend Litvinenko made a bit on the side by smuggling toxic isotopes. The future victim of polonium poisoning lived on Berezovsky's hand-me-downs and badly needed more money.

According to information leaked from the post-mortem examination, Litvinenko died from a dose that could cost 30 million euros. This seems a bit too rich for a murder.

quote:

Version Two: Litvinenko wanted to shake off Berezovsky and therefore posed a threat to the exiled oligarch, according to the popular daily Izvestia.

Shadows have been recently gathering over Berezovsky. The memorandum of cooperation, which Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Zvyagintsev has signed with Scotland Yard, did not promise a bright future to the businessman. Besides, Litvinenko, who knew too much, probably lost his nerve and said something about his spiritual tossing and turning. Unfortunately, a dead acquaintance is better than a living friend who talks too much.

quote:

Version Three: Litvinenko was connected with an underground London laboratory where a dirty nuclear bomb was being made for Chechen terrorists. Russian nuclear experts put forth this version in a Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov show on the NTV channel.

Two facts corroborate this version:

One of Litvinenko's close friends was Akhmed Zakayev, the former commander of Chechen fighters, whom Russian prosecutors want to see in Moscow in connection with cases of murders and torture in Chechnya.

About two years ago, Berezovsky told the world that Chechen separatists had acquired a portable nuclear bomb and lacked only one minor detail. That "minor detail" could be polonium-210, which can be used to detonate a dirty nuclear bomb, experts say.

Maybe Litvinenko was carrying the polonium to the lab, and paid with his life for the deadly substance?

quote:

Version Four: Litvinenko was "|punished" by one of his former FSB colleagues whom the defector turned over to the British secret service. There are many books and movies about such "avengers" from the ranks of former secret officers and other "offended" masters of the cloak and dagger.

However, there is an undeniable argument against this version: Litvinenko was a minuscule target, a fly compared to such defection giants as Oleg Gordievsky and Vladimir Rezun, who writes under the name of Viktor Suvorov.

Gordievsky was reputed to be deputy chief of station in London and exposed dozens of Russian KGB officers, while Rezun threw enough mud at dozens of military intelligence (GRU) officers in his book "Aquarium", which subsequently appeared in the United States as "Inside the Aquarium."

So, why start with Litvinenko, and use a method that rules out using it for "noble revenge" against other "sinners"?

quote:

According to information leaked from the post-mortem examination, Litvinenko died from a dose that could cost 30 million euros. This seems a bit too rich for a murder.

quote:

 
On several occasions in the past 15 years, Russian police have intercepted smugglers trying to carry the alpha-radiation emitting substance out of the former Soviet Union. In 1999 an army officer was caught trying to cross from Kazakhstan into Uzbekistan clutching a glass capsule marked 'RA 23-54' and a metal canister covered with lead foil. Under interrogation, he admitted it contained a radioactive mixture of polonium and beryllium, used in Russia to trigger nuclear chain reactions.

Nuclear poison