Het Litvinenko Complot

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

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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?

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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.

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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

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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
 

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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
 

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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

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

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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.

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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
 

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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.
 

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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?

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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
 

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

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Ik kwam dit vandaag nog tegen
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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.
[..]

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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.

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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

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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

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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/

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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

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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

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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.

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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]

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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.
 

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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

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

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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."

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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

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

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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.

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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.
 

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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
[..]

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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.

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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]

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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.

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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:

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[...]

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
 

quote:

Op dinsdag 5 december 2006 20:31 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
Interessante post 6833-228

De liquidatietheorie lijkt op het eerste gezicht het meest logisch, totdat je dit bedenkt:
[..]

Het enige wat dan nog zin maakt is dat iemand per se deze langzame dood wilde of per se dit middel wilde gebruiken vanwege de symboliek.

quote:

According to the British newspaper, Litvinenko admitted to Scaramella that he had "masterminded the smuggling of radioactive material to Zurich in 2000." [bron]

quote:

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. [bron]

quote:

De smokkeltheorie (waarbij een ongeluk is gebeurd) begint meer te passen. Polonium is redelijk veilig te vervoeren omdat de alfastraling gemakkelijk is tegen te houden. Een kleine glazen capsule is in principe genoeg. Maar ja, kijk eens hoe drugs voor bolletjesslikkers wordt ingepakt en ook dat gaat wel eens mis.

Moreover, lately they have come into possession of an atomic bomb. “It is a small portable device which had not been used until now for only one reason: because some necessary element was missing” - Berezovsky Claims Chechen Rebels Have A-bomb

De Russische bommen hebben idd polonium als ontsteker.
[..]

quote:

Op dinsdag 5 december 2006 20:53 schreef XXVIII het volgende:
oeioeioei, volgens mij zijn wij hier een complot tot het maken van een vuile bom op het spoor, zouden ze bij de inlichtingendiensten ook al zover zijn?

Nu maar wachten totdat er een nieuwsbericht komt over het feit dat Moskou niet langer bestaat

quote:

Op dinsdag 5 december 2006 20:53 schreef XXVIII het volgende:
oeioeioei, volgens mij zijn wij hier een complot tot het maken van een vuile bom op het spoor, zouden ze bij de inlichtingendiensten ook al zover zijn?

Nu maar wachten totdat er een nieuwsbericht komt over het feit dat Moskou niet langer bestaat

quote:

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

[..]

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

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

quote:

 

The Times December 08, 2006

Ex-KGB spy 'was poisoned in hotel'

As Alexander Litvinenko was buried yesterday investigators revealed that they now suspect that the former Kremlin spy was poisoned in the bar of a luxury London hotel when he met two Russian businessmen.

All seven bar staff working at the Pine Bar in the Millennium Hotel that night have tested positive for polonium-210.

[...]

The radioactive isotope has also been found at Risc Management, a security firm in Cavendish Place, visited by Litvinenko with Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun.
 

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 december 2006 07:21 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:

[..]


[..]

quote:

Police believe that the killer may have stalked Litvinenko in London that day and had first tried to poison the ex-KGB colonel in a sushi bar. That failed but the poisoner left ample traces of the deadly radioactive isotope in the Piccadilly restaurant.

Nog een theorie:

quote:

Spy Death by Nuclear Poisoning Tied to American Hiroshima

The death of Alexander Litvinenko by radiological poisoning points to the possibility that the former Soviet spy may have been involved with Islamic terrorists in the preparation of tactical nuclear weapons for use in the jihad against the United States and its NATO allies.

[...]

quote:

According to nuclear expert David Morgan, killing a spy or political dissident with a grain or two of polonium-210 is as ludicrous as shooting a rat with a howitzer.

Ja of mosquito hunting met een Bazooka:
"But Roy must make sure"

quote:

Op zaterdag 9 december 2006 07:49 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
[...]
En waarom zou hij de moordenaar zijn als hij zelf ook doodziek in het ziekenhuis ligt? Iemand die dit middel gebruikt voor een moord zal zeer goed doordrongen zijn van wat het is en hoe je er mee om moet gaan lijkt me.
Litvinenko, Kovtun en Scaramella hebben aan polonium blootgestaan. Veel meer worden we eigenlijk niet wijzer van de media.

quote:

Andrei Lugovoy has damage to vital organs consistent with exposure to dangerous levels of radiation, Interfax news agency reported, the same condition that killed Kremlin critic Mr. Litvinenko in London on Nov. 23.

Mr. Lugovoy's business partner, Dmitry Kovtun, is also in hospital and Mario Scaramella, an Italian contact of Mr. Litvinenko, has undergone treatment in London for the effects of contamination.

[...]

Interfax said its information on Mr. Lugovoy's condition came from his medical notes. "Disruption in the functioning of some organs affected by radiation nuclides has been found," it quoted a medical source as saying.

"Lugovoy's condition is considerably better than that of Kovtun, but he also has symptoms of contamination."

quote:

Kovtun's ex-wife in hospital with suspected polonium-210 poisoning

BERLIN, December 11 (RIA Novosti) - The ex-wife of a witness in the case of a former Russian security officer, her two children and boyfriend have been hospitalized in Germany with suspected polonium-210 poisoning, the head of the investigation team in Hamburg said Monday.
[...]
Investigators also said traces of polonium-210 have been found on Kovtun's clothes and some articles in the former wife's Hamburg apartment, as well as in other apartments in Hamburg which he visited from October 28 till November 1.

Representatives of the investigative team also said "they have almost no doubt that Dmitry Kovtun brought polonium from Moscow."

quote:

Op maandag 11 december 2006 19:30 schreef Scootmobiel het volgende:
[..]
knip

Kan het zo gegaan zijn?
Lijkt me wel een plausibele mogelijkheid.

quote:

But Scaramella told the AP that he had been misquoted by the newspaper.

"He (Litvinenko) wanted to see me because he knew about smuggling of nuclear material, but as far as I know he was never involved in nuclear smuggling," he said.

quote:

"Who told you that the contamination took place on Nov. 1? It took place much earlier, on Oct. 16," Lugovoi was quoted as saying by the paper. Lugovoi is himself undergoing radiation checks in a Moscow clinic.

quote:

A Russian linked to a probe into the radiation poisoning of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko said he had been contaminated by the former agent in London weeks before the latter fell fatally ill.

"I have only one explanation for the presence of polonium," Dmitry Kovtun said, referring to the radioactive substance found in Litvinenko's dead body and subsequently detected in properties visited by Kovtun in Germany.

"It is that I brought (traces of) it back from London, where I met Alexander Litvinenko on Oct. 16, 17 and 18," Kovtun told German television program "Spiegel TV."

quote:

German police: ex-spy death may be linked to nuclear smuggling

BERLIN, December 13 (RIA Novosti) - German investigators are considering the possibility that polonium-210 was smuggled through the country and might be connected to the radioactive poisoning of a Russian security service defector in London.

[...]

"Alongside several other versions behind this crime, we are seriously considering the possibility that Litvinenko's death could have been connected to the illegal trade in nuclear materials," a police source told the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung, adding that no clear evidence had been uncovered yet.

[...]

We know that there has been a demand for nuclear materials in terrorist circles for several years," the newspaper's police source said, adding that Litvinenko's partners could have been involved in smuggling schemes.

"So we are carefully watching these circles now," the source said, noting, however, that no offers for polonium-210 had been tracked so far on the black market because the substance was too expensive.

Interpol said Tuesday it would join British and Russian investigators studying various scenarios in Litvinenko's death.

quote:

 
Polonium incident: a rehearsal for a dirty bomb?

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Tatyana Sinitsyna) - The ado around the polonium incident in London has a certain quirk to it which I find annoying. Why is everyone talking about the victims (real and potential) and piquant details of secondary importance, when there is something far more important to worry about?

Nuclear physicist Alexander Borovoi, a professor at the Kurchatov Institute research center, pinpointed my cause of concern: "The worst part of the story is that it was like a rehearsal for a dirty bomb. The incident shows that something dangerous is cooking in the terrorist kitchen, with menacing ideas and plans that can generally be described as a crime."

"Litvinenko or one of his close friends have somehow got hold of polonium," Borovoi said. "From them we can trace a connection to those whose dream is to get hold of a dirty bomb - terrorists."

It is a fact that terrorist number one, Osama bin Laden, once bought from shady arms dealers three containers with weapons-grade fissionable materials. The world was saved then only because the dealers cheated bin Laden by selling him medical wastes, which also set off the Geiger meter.

We were probably lucky this autumn too, because something apparently went amiss in London. Polonium doesn't forgive lax attitudes.

Professor Borovoi said people incapable of working with Polonium-210 professionally probably handled the vial, letting the jinni out.

"I don't think polonium was a random choice," Borovoi said. "I believe a first-rate specialist is advising the terrorists."

Silvery polonium looks like common lead and is an interim phase in the long chain of uranium decay; it is produced in nuclear reactors for technical purposes. It emits alpha particles that spread out at a huge speed, pulling along other, undecayed, atoms that pollute the air. Those who breathe them in are doomed.

"My colleague, Irina Simanovskaya, who has worked with polonium, told me that she handled the stuff at minimum distances with all possible precautions in the lab hood. However, it turned out several days later that polonium had penetrated the hood polluting the equipment installed there," Borovoi said.

According to him, polonium can be detected only by special gauges, spreads out from the polluted place almost without restraint, and much time will pass before it becomes clear why people are dying.

Polonium is widely used for medical purposes in special equipment, and can be bought in nearly any country, including over the Internet. One can do this openly in the Untied States because only minuscule parts are sold. But we cannot be sure that criminals will not pay more to acquire a bigger amount of the deadly substance.

On the subject of the rumored involvement of security services in the Litvinenko incident, Borovoi said: "No security services will become involved with a dirty bomb, and I see no reason why they would do this. Such methods are inadmissible in state politics because they amount to the use of nuclear weapons."

If somebody wanted to do away with Litvinenko, they would not have used such a dangerous and expensive weapon as polonium, the physicist said.

"In my view, this is a warning to us," he said. "Terrorists could have acquired a horrible weapon. We must wake up to reality, see the threat, exert maximum caution, and take emergency measures to stop radioactive terrorism."
 

quote:

Op zaterdag 16 december 2006 07:53 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
[...]
In dat andere stuk - Polonium incident: a rehearsal for a dirty bomb? (wat ook op smokkel hint) - wordt gezegd dat geheime diensten zich niet inlaten met 'vuile bommen' omdat het in feite neerkomt op een nucleair wapen. Daar zit imo wel wat in. Er gelden natuurlijk ongeschreven wetten tussen landen en machtsblokken. Elkaar niet met radioactieve stoffen te lijf gaan lijkt me een logische. Ondanks dat zowel de Russen als de Amerikanen al zo'n 60 jaar over uranium, plutonium etc. beschikken hebben ze voor zover ik weet het nooit op elkaar losgelaten. (met uitzondering van DU munitie misschien). In ieder geval niet in liquidaties.

quote:

 
There are indications that Polonium-210 may have been brought to Britain as early as mid-October, when the ex-FSB man held the first of a series of meetings with Andrei Lugovoy, a former colleague whom he had known for many years. Mr Lugovoy too has left traces of radiation in several places, including the British Embassy in Moscow.

The Independent
 

quote:

Litvinenko & Scaramella reportedly linked to former EPA criminal enforcement official

[...]

A top EPA official attended, along with Scaramella and former EPA criminal enforcement branch legal counsel Michael Penders, the Nov. 15 and 16, 2000, conference in New York City on "Combating International Eco-Crime in a Global Economy. The official represented the EPA's Office of Criminal Enforcement's Center for Strategic Environmental Enforcement. That office has been described by an EPA insider as consisting of "cover up artists." The insider further stated the EPA criminal investigative branch "has access to NASA skyviewing . . . geographical information system (GIS), they know where every little ounce of bad stuff is in the world and they can get access to it." The insider said it would not surprise him in the very least that "the [polonium] 210 came from people inside this group. Their loyalty ties strongly to Bush and company" and that previous external-to-EPA criminal investigations "thwarted some of their past misdeeds."

[…]

Equally interesting is that Scaramella once offered FS (the Italian Railway) an estimated 17 million euro video surveillance system for free. The system would have covered every train station and other railway facility in Italy. Scaramella's deal was that he would provide the system for free in exchange for the exclusive use of the video images captured by the system.

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Other revelations have Scaramella allegedly sabotaging the San Marino investigation into a possible international arms trade involving Switzerland. By publicizing that investigation as a Russian "KGB" operation, Scaramella blew the investigation apart.

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Russian suggests Litvinenko may have smuggled polonium
Mainz, Germany - A Russian businessman who has been implicated in the mysterious London polonium poisoning case has told a German television channel that he thinks the dead man, Alexander Litvinenko, may have been a polonium smuggler.

ZDF public television in Mainz said Wednesday it had telephoned Dmitry Kovtun in Moscow. German police are investigating Kovtun for illicit radiation use after he spread traces of polonium during a visit to the German city of Hamburg in late October.

British police say Kovtun met on November 1 in London with former Russian secret agent Litvinenko, who fell ill and died three weeks later.

'I believe Litvinenko was unreliable. He was short of money. It's conceivable that he was smuggling polonium,' Kovtun said.

ZDF, which was to air an investigative programme about the case Wednesday evening, released an account of the interview in advance.

'I have never been involved with polonium,' Kovtun added. 'I know nothing about that, and nobody gave me any of it.'

Russian news reports say Kovtun has been under treatment in a specialized clinic for polonium poisoning.

Kovtun and a business partner Andrei Lugovoi say they met Litvinenko in mid-October in London.

© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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Italian police arrest Mario Scaramella

Police have arrested an Italian man who met with former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko the day he fell ill from poisoning, Italian news agencies have reported.




Mario Scaramella was arrested in Naples after returning from London, the ANSA and Apcom agencies reported.

Rome prosecutors have allegedly been investigating Mr Scaramella for violating secrets and possible arms trafficking.

Mr Scaramella met with Mr Litvinenko at a London sushi bar on Nov 1, the day the former KGB agent fell ill.

The Italian was later hospitalised for treatment of suspected radiation poisoning, but has since been released.

Mr Litvinenko died on Nov 23 after blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for involvement in his poisoning — an allegation that the Kremlin has strongly denied.
 

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Mr Scaramella is being held in isolation in a Rome prison on suspicion of aggravated slander.

He is also under investigation for alleged arms trafficking and breaching secrecy rules when he served as a consultant to a parliamentary commission looking into Soviet espionage in Italy.
 

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Radiation 'poisoned diplomat'

A BRITISH-based Russian diplomat who died two days before Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned was ALSO nuked with radiation, it has been claimed.

Igor Ponomarev, 41, collapsed at home after a night at the opera.

His death came hours before he was due to meet former KGB agent Litvinenko’s Italian contact Mario Scaramella.

Russian authorities said Ponomarev had a heart attack at his London home. But a friend revealed he had been “gasping for water” — a symptom of radiation poisoning.

And he told how Ponomarev — ambassador to the International Maritime Organisation — drank three litres of water during and after the opera.

The pal said: “Igor’s wife was going to call an ambulance. But when she entered the room he was dead. He had fallen from the sofa and hit his face.” Experts believe the thirst was consistent with poisoning by polonium-210, the radioactive substance that killed Litvinenko.

Ponomarev died on October 30, just before Litvinenko, 43, visited a diner and was poisoned. Due to diplomatic status, Ponomarev had no UK post-mortem or inquest. His body was flown to Russia.

The pal said Ponomarev’s family were shocked as he had no heart problems. And they were puzzled by his link to “intelligence consultant” Scaramella, who met Litvinenko the day he was poisoned.

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...About 3pm Litvinenko met Mario Scaramella, an Italian investigator who was in London for a meeting of the International Maritime Organisation. Scaramella was keen to see Litvinenko, he said, because he had received information about the FSB targeting people for elimination, including himself and Litvinenko....[bron]

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Police believe Litvinenko poisoned twice

Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy, was the victim of a "double hit" by the assassins who poisoned him with radioactive polonium-210, police believe.

Detectives suspect that Mr Litvinenko, 44, who lived in north London, was first poisoned several days before he was attacked at a central London hotel on November 1.

[...]

His post-mortem examination revealed two "spikes" of radiation poisoning, suggesting he received two separate doses. A detective said last night: "It may well be that Mr Litvinenko's killers poisoned him twice, possibly because they wanted to make absolutely sure he would not recover."

[...]

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Op dinsdag 16 januari 2007 14:10 schreef Scootmobiel het volgende:
Gisteren de VPRO-documentaire gezien, waarin Litvinenko vertelt over zijn ervaringen in de FSB en in de Tjetsjeense oorlog, zijn arrestatie door de FSB (na vrijgesproken te zijn door de rechtbank), en over zijn vlucht naar Engeland. Ook komen zijn vrienden en zijn vader aan het woord, na zijn overlijden.

Ik vond het een interessante en integere documentaire, heb hem op video opgenomen.

Hier is hij te bekijken (± 52 minuten):
http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleveringen/32655236/

Morgenmiddag om 14.25 uur wordt er een herhaling van het programma uitgezonden (Ned.2).

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Op zondag 31 december 2006 10:38 schreef anisubs het volgende:
ipv polonium hadden ze misschien beter iets simpelers kunnen nemen.

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How Many Spies Does It Take To Make A Cup Of Tea? The BBC Reveals All.

So, BBC's Panorama has cracked the Litvinenko case. As the opening titles quickly tell: it was Putin, in the Pine Bar, with the teacup.

[...]

Since the programme was made, MI6 has been fiddling with the teacup fiction. Now MI6 Gordievsky decides that the tea wasn't made in the Pine Bar at all but upstairs in a hotel room. As he tells the Times only this week:

He had gone to the room with Mr Kovtun and another former Russian agent, Andrei Lugovoy.
The three men were joined in the room later by the mystery figure who was introduced as "Vladislav". Sasha remembered the man making him a cup of tea.
"His belief is that the water from the kettle was only lukewarm and that the polonium-210 was added, which heated the drink through radiation so he had a hot cup of tea. The poison would have showed up in a cold drink," Gordievsky added.

Well, that's funny, because Marina Litvinenko tells Panorama:

"Sasha said it was tea already served, on the table (in the Pine Bar) and he just took this cup of tea, and he didn't finish it at all, and how he later said tea wasn't very tasty, 'because it was cold'."

[...]

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Litvinenko family spokesman Alexander Goldfarb said last night: "This proves he was No 1 on the Russian security services' hit list."

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Lugovoi: British Involved in Spy's Death

The Russian businessman whom Britain has named as a suspect in the killing of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko claimed Thursday that he has evidence of British special services' involvement in the poisoning death.

"Even if (British special services) hadn't done it itself, it was done under its control or connivance," Andrei Lugovoi told a news conference. Asked if he had evidence for the allegation, he said "I have evidence" but did not elaborate.

[...]

On Thursday, Lugovoi also claimed that Britain had tried to recruit him to provide intelligence. British special services "asked me to collect compromising information on President (Vladimir) Putin," Lugovoi said.

Lugovoi said the attempted recruitment occurred during business trips to Britain in previous years. He did not give a precise date, but indicated the alleged approach occurred in late 2005 or early 2006.
 

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Gezin Litvinenko mag twee jaar na gifmoord huis weer in

Twee jaar na de moord met radioactief materiaal op de Russische voormalige geheim agent Alexander Litvinenko mag het gezin van Litvinenko weer naar huis. De woning werd ontsmet en is weer veilig, zo deelde de gemeenteraad van de Londense buitenwijk Haringey mee. Weduwe Marina Litvinenko kreeg de sleutels van haar huis terug.

Alexander Litvinenko stierf in november 2006 nadat hij in een Londens hotel was vergiftigd met het zeer giftige Polonium 210. Heel wat plaatsen en vliegtuigen moesten wegens besmettingsgevaar worden schoongemaakt. De zaak zorgde voor spanningen tussen Rusland en Groot-Brittannië omdat Moskou hoofdverdachte Andrej Loegovoj niet wilde uitleveren. (belga/lpb)

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Even so, as a declassified Los Alamos document notes, the detection of Polonium-210 remains "a key indication of a nuclear weapons program in its early stages." So when Polonium-210 was detected in Iraq in 1991, Iran in 2004, and North Korea in October 2006, the concern was that these countries might be trying to build a nuclear weapon.

When Polonium-210 was discovered in London in late November 2006 in Litvinenko's body, however, no such proliferation alarm bells went off. Instead, the police assumed that this component of early-stage nuclear bombs had been smuggled into London solely to commit a murder. It would be as if a suitcase nuclear bomb had been found next to an irradiated corpse in London, and everyone assumed the bomb had been smuggled into the country solely to murder that person. Michael Specter, in the New Yorker, for example, called it the "first known case of nuclear terrorism perpetrated against an individual." But why would anyone use a nuclear weapon to kill an individual, when a knife, bullet, or conventional poison would do the trick more quickly, efficiently, and certainly?

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The Specter That Haunts the Death of Litvinenko
[...]

The British prosecutors aided the flight from reality by filing an extradition request in July 2007. Not only was there no extradition treaty between Britain and Russia, but Article 61 of the Russian Constitution prohibited the extradition from Russia of any of its citizens. Further inflaming matters, Sir Tony Brenton, the British Ambassador to Moscow, suggested that the Putin government should disregard the Russian constitution and "work with us creatively to find a way around this impediment," since British authorities had "cooperated closely and at length with the Russian Prosecutor General's Office." After Russia rejected the extradition request, Ambassador Brenton objected that its decision was not made "on the basis of the evidence," which implied that Britain had furnished Russia with compelling evidence to back up its request. Then Britain expelled four members of the Russian embassy in London, effectively holding the Russian government responsible for Litvinenko's death, and began an international imbroglio.

The suspect named in the extradition request is Andrei Lugovoi, who, according to the British, poisoned Litvinenko's tea in the Pine Bar when they met on November 1, 2006. Mr. Lugovoi admitted to meeting with Litvinenko to discuss a business venture with him, but denied having anything to do with his death. Mr. Lugovoi also had been contaminated by Polonium-210, but so was almost everyone else who had come in contact with Litvinenko around that time. Since Ambassador Brenton had suggested that the incriminating parts of the case had been given to the Russian authorities to back up the extradition request, I went to Moscow to find out about more about that evidence.

The Kremlin is not known to be forthcoming with secret documents, but, in this instance, I was asking to see British, not Russian secrets. Even so, obtaining access to them was not easy. By the time I arrived in Moscow in late November 2007, the Russian Prosecutor General had consigned this (as well as other high-profile investigations) to a new unit called the National Investigative Committee. It was headed by Alexander Bastrykin, a former law professor and a deputy attorney general from St. Petersburg, who was just assembling his staff in a non-descript but well-guarded building across the street from Moscow's elite Higher Technical University in the district of Lefortovo.

Before I could meet officials in a conference room there to review the British file, my resourceful research associate in Moscow had spent many weeks sending the necessary documents to Mr. Bastrykin and his staff. There were other bureaucratic requisites, such as my agreeing to indemnify the Russian government for any costs that resulted from disclosing the British evidence, submitting my proposed questions, and agreeing not to identify by name any of the officials working for the Committee and refer to them collectively as the "Russian investigators." Then I was told, "The media often reproach the Russian side for its unwillingness to cooperate with the British side, when in reality the situation is reverse." As if to demonstrate this point, the Russian investigators provided me with access to the British files.

What immediately caught my attention was that it did not include the basic documents in any murder case, such as the postmortem autopsy report, which would help establish how — and why — Litvinenko died. In lieu of it, Detective Inspector Robert Lock of the Metropolitan Police Service at the New Scotland Yard wrote that he was "familiar with the autopsy results" and that Litvinenko had died of "Acute Radiation Syndrome."

Like Sherlock Holmes's clue of the dog that didn't bark, this omission was illuminating in itself. After all, Britain and Russia had embarked on a joint investigation of the Litvinenko case, which, as far the Russians were concerned, involved the Polonium-210 contamination of the Russian citizens who had contact with Litvinenko. They needed to determine when, how, and under what circumstances Litvinenko had been exposed to the radioactive nuclear component. The "when" question required access to the toxicology analysis, which usually is part of the autopsy report. There had already been a leak to a British newspaper that toxicologists had found two separate "spikes" of Polonium-210 in Litvinenko's body, which would indicate that he had been exposed at two different times to Polonium-210. Such a multiple exposure could mean that Litvinenko was in contact with the Polonium-210 days, or even weeks, before he fatally ingested it. To answer the "how" question, they wanted to see the postmortem slides of Litvinenko's lungs, digestive track, and body, which also are part of the autopsy report. These photos could show if Litvinenko had inhaled, swallowed, or gotten the Polonium-210 into the blood stream through an open cut.

The Russian investigators also wanted to know why Litvinenko was not given the correct antidote in the hospital and why the radiation had not been correctly diagnosed for more than three weeks. They said that their repeated requests to speak to the doctors and see their notes were "denied" and that none of the material they received in the "joint investigation" even "touched upon the issue of the change in Litvinenko's diagnosis from Thallium poisoning to Polonium poisoning." They added, "We have no trustworthy data on the cause of death of Litvinenko since the British authorities have refused to provide the necessary documents."

The only document provided in the British file indicating that a crime had been committed is an affidavit by Rosemary Fernandez, a Crown Prosecutor, stating that the extradition request is "in accordance with the criminal law of England and Wales, as well as with the European Convention on Extradition 1957."

The Radiation Trail

The British police summarized their case against Mr. Lugovoi in a report that accompanied the extradition papers. But instead of citing any conventional evidence, such as eyewitness accounts, surveillance videos of the Pine Bar, fingerprints on a poison container (or even the existence of a container), or Mr. Lugovoi's possible motive, the report was almost entirely based on a "trail" of Polonium-210 radiation that had been detected many weeks after they had been in contact with the Polonium-210.

From the list of the sites supplied to the Russian investigators, it is clear that a number of them coincide with Mr. Lugovoi's movements in October and November 2006, but the direction is less certain. When Mr. Lugovoi flew from Moscow to London on October 15 on Transaero Airlines, no radiation traces were found on his plane. It was only after he had met with Litvinenko at Erinys International on October 16 that traces were found on the British Airways planes on which he later flew, suggesting to the Russian investigators that the trail began in London and then went to Moscow. They also found that in London the trail was inexplicably erratic, with traces that were found, as they noted, "in a place where a person stayed for a few minutes, but were absent in the place where he was staying for several hours, although these events follow one after another."

When the Russian investigators asked the British for a comprehensive list of all the sites tested, the British refused, saying it was not "in the interest of their investigation." This refusal led the Russian investigators to suspect that the British might be truncating the trail to "fit their case."

Despite its erratic nature, the radioactive trail clearly involved the Millennium Hotel. Traces were found both in rooms in which Mr. Lugovoi and his family stayed between October 31 and November 2, and the hotel's Pine Bar, where Litvinenko met Messrs. Lugovoi and Kovtun in the early evening of November 1. If Litvinenko's tea was indeed poisoned at that Pine Bar meeting, as the British contended, Mr. Lugovoi could be placed at the crime scene. But other than the radiation, the report cited no witnesses, video surveillance tapes, or other evidence that showed that the poisoning had occurred at the Pine Bar. It could just as well have occurred early in the day at other sites that also tested positive for radiation.

Litvinenko, who was probably the best witness to that day's events, initially said he believed that he had been poisoned at his lunch with Mr. Scaramella at the Itsu restaurant. Even one week after he had been in the hospital, he gave a bedside BBC radio interview in which he still pointed to that meeting, saying Mr. Scaramella "gave me some papers.... after several hours I felt sick with symptoms of poisoning." At no time did he even mention his later meeting at the Pine Bar with Mr. Lugovoi.

Not only did the Itsu have traces of Polonium-210, but Mr. Scaramella was contaminated. Since Mr. Scaramella had just arrived from Italy and had not met with either Mr. Lugovoi or Mr. Kovtun, Litvinenko was the only one among those people known to be exposed to Polonium-210 who could have contaminated him. Which means that Litvinenko had been tainted by the Polonium-210 before he met Mr. Lugovoi as the Pine Bar. Litvinenko certainly could have been contaminated well before his meeting with Mr. Scaramella. Several nights earlier, he had gone to the Hey Joey club in Mayfair. According to its manager, Litvinenko was seated in the VIP lap-dancing cubicle that later tested positive for Polonium-210.

The most impressive piece of evidence involves the relatively high level of Polonium-210 in Mr. Lugovoi's room at the Millennium Hotel. Although the police report does not divulge the actual level itself (or any other radiation levels), Detective Inspector Lock states that an expert witness called "Scientist A" found that these hotel traces "were at such a high level as to establish a link with the original Polonium source material." Since no container for the Polonium-210 was ever found, "Scientist A" presumably is basing his opinion on a comparison of the radiation level in Mr. Lugovoi's room and other sites, such as Litvinenko's home or airplane seats. Such evidence would only be meaningful if the different sites had been pristine when the measurements were taken. However, all the sites, including the Millennium hotel rooms, had been compromised by weeks of usage and cleaning. So the differences in the radiation levels could have resulted from extraneous factors, such as vacuuming, or heating conditions.

The Russian investigators also found these levels had little evidentiary value because the British had provided "no reliable information regarding who else visited the hotel room in the interval between when Lugovoi departed and when the traces of polonium 210 were discovered." As a result of this nearly month-long gap, they could not "rule out the possibility that the discovered traces could have originated through cross-contamination by outside parties."

Hospital tests confirmed that Messrs. Lugovoi, Kovtun, and Scaramella and Litvinenko's widow, Marina, all had some contact with Polonium-210. But it is less clear who contaminated whom. The Russian investigators concluded that all the radiation traces provided in the British report, including the "high level" cited by "Scientist A," could have emanated from a single event, such as a leak — by design or accident — at the October 16 meeting at the security company in Berezovsky's building. But they could not find "a single piece of evidence which would confirm the charge brought against A.K. Lugovoi."

Britain may have had more incriminating evidence against Mr. Lugovoi than it chose to provide to Russia. It may not have wanted to share data that would reveal intelligence sources. But why would it refuse to share such basic evidence as the autopsy report, the medical findings, and radiation data? And if Britain wanted to extradite Mr. Lugovoi, why would it send such embarrassingly thin substantiation? Mr. Putin blamed British incompetence, saying, "If the people who have sent us this request did not know that the Russian Constitution prohibits extradition of Russian citizens to foreign countries, then, of course, this would make their level of competence questionable." But here he may have underestimated the British purpose in staging this gambit.

The End Game

Before the extradition dispute, Russian investigators, in theory, could have questioned relevant witnesses in London. Their proposed roster of witnesses suggested that Russian interest extended to the Russian expatriate community in Britain, or "Londongrad," as it is now called. The Litvinenko case provided the Russians with the opportunity for a fishing expedition, since Litvinenko had at the time of his death worked with many of Russia's enemies, including Mr. Berezovsky; his foundation head, Mr. Goldfarb, who dispensed money to a web of anti-Putin websites; his Chechen ally Akhmed Zakayev, who headed a commission investigating Russian war crimes in Chechnya (for which Litvinenko acted as an investigator), and former owners of the expropriated oil giant Yukos, who were battling in the courts to regain control of billions of dollars in its off-shore bank accounts.

The Russian investigation could also have veered into Litvinenko's activities in the shadowy world of security consultants, including his dealings with the two security companies in Mr. Berezovsky's building, Erinys International and Titon International, and his involvement with Mr. Scaramella in an attempt to plant incriminating evidence on a suspected nuclear-component smuggler — a plot for which Mr. Scaramella was jailed after his phone conversations with Litvinenko were intercepted by the Italian national police.

The Russians had asked for more information about radiation traces at the offices of these companies, and Mr. Lugovoi had said that at one of these companies, Erinys, he had been offered large sums of money to provide compromising information about Russian officials. Mr. Kovtun, who also attended that meeting, backs up Mr. Lugovoi's story. Such charges had the potential for embarrassing not only the security companies that had employed Litvinenko and employed former Scotland Yard and British intelligence officers, but the British government, since it had provided Litvinenko with a passport under the alias "Edwin Redwald Carter" to travel to parts of the former Soviet Union.

The British extradition gambit ended the Russian investigation in Londongrad. It also discredited Mr. Lugovoi's account by naming him as a murder suspect. In terms of a public relations tactic, it resulted in a brilliant success by putting the blame on Russian stonewalling for the failure to solve the mystery. What it obscured is the elephant-in-the-room that haunts the case: the fact that a crucial component for building an early-stage nuke was smuggled into London in 2006. Was it brought in merely as a murder weapon or as part of a transaction on the international arms market?

There is little, if any, possibility, that this question will be answered in the present stalemate. The Russian prosecutor-general has declared that the British case is baseless; Mr. Lugovoi, elected to the Russian Parliament in December 2007, now has immunity from prosecution, and Mr. Scaramella, under house arrest in Naples, has been silenced. The press, for its part, remains largely fixated on a revenge murder theory that corresponds more closely to the SMERSH villain in James Bond movies than to the reality of the case of the smuggled Polonium-210.

After considering all the evidence, my hypothesis is that Litvinenko came in contact with a Polonium-210 smuggling operation and was, either wittingly or unwittingly, exposed to it. Litvinenko had been a person of interest to the intelligence services of many countries, including Britain's MI-6, Russia's FSB, America's CIA (which rejected his offer to defect in 2000), and Italy's SISMI, which was monitoring his phone conversations.

His murky operations, whatever their purpose, involved his seeking contacts in one of the most lawless areas in the former Soviet Union, the Pankisi Gorge, which had become a center for arms smuggling. He had also dealt with people accused of everything from money laundering to trafficking in nuclear components. These activities may have brought him, or his associates, in contact with a sample of Polonium-210, which then, either by accident or by design, contaminated and killed him.

To unlock the mystery, Britain must make available its secret evidence, including the autopsy report, the comprehensive list of places in which radiation was detected, and the surveillance reports of Litvinenko and his associates. If Britain considers it too sensitive for public release, it should be turned over to an international commission of inquiry. The stakes are too high here to leave unresolved the mystery of the smuggled Polonium-210.

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Op donderdag 23 september 2010 16:29 schreef Helena1989 het volgende:
Ik denk niet dat Poetin hem heeft vermoord. Waarom zou hij zijn land te schande maken in zo'n precaire tijd. Amper iemand kende Litvinenko vroeger, nu kent iedere straathond hem. Het is hetzelfde als een pion slaan en je loper verliezen, zo dom is Poetin niet hoor.

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WikiLeaks dag 14: Rusland was moordenaars Litvinenko op spoor

AMSTERDAM - Britse veiligheidsdiensten hebben Russische agenten dwarsgezeten bij de opsporing van de moordenaar van ex-KGB-spion Alexander Litvinenko. Dat valt op te maken uit documenten van klokkenluiderssite WikiLeaks, waarin ook Nederland kort wordt genoemd.
In de documenten, waarover The Guardian bericht, staat dat Rusland de moordenaars van Litvinenko op het spoor waren, maar dat de Britse veiligheidsdiensten het onderzoek tegenhielden, omdat zij de situatie zelf onder controle zouden hebben. Litvinenko overleed in 2006 in Londen nadat hij was vergiftigd met polonium, een zeer radioactieve stof. De Britse autoriteiten hebben de voormalige KGB-officier Andrei Lugovoi aangewezen als belangrijkste verdachte, maar Rusland weigert hem uit te leveren.

Het gelekte bericht is afkomstig uit 2006 en zou een verslag zijn van een 'vriendschappelijk diner' tussen het Amerikaanse hoofd contraterrorisme, Henry Crumpton, en de speciale afgevaardigde van de Russische president Anatoli Safonov. Laatsgenoemde zegt in de nota 'dat de Russische autoriteiten in Londen wisten dat individuen radioactief materiaal de stad in brachten en ze ook volgden, maar dat ze door de Britten werd verteld dat de situatie onder controle was'.

Nederland
In de memo wordt ook over de internationale troepenmacht in Afghanistan gesproken. De Britse en Canadese soldaten waren gewaardeerde collega's, maar de Nederlanders zorgden voor problemen omdat ze 'constant vragen bleven stellen over de regelgeving,' aldus Safonov.