Poisoned: Spy Who Quit Russia For Britain (Aleksander Litvinenko)

[Mythopoeika]

Somebody I was talking to the other day remarked that the amount required (if priced at the $69 per unit quoted by Lazar's little enterprise) would cost in the region of $700,000.
That means that somebody with some serious wealth and power wanted Litvinenko dead.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

The amount used to kill our Ruskie chum may have been the size of a grain of salt which might not sound like a lot but would require a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator to manufacture in those quantities.

have any proof to back that up EMPS ?

That is from the nuclear expert on BBC News 24.

This isn't a big secret or anything. Check out Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium_210#Occurrence

Its natural occurence in uranium ore is 100 micrograms per metric tonne of (thats a lot of decimal places).

It is mainly manufactured in nuclear reactors but even then only 100 grams are made a year. This from the Royal Society of Chemistry:

www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2006/No ... 110601.asp

Emps and Wembley - if a grain of Polonium 10 the size of a grain of salt is enough to kill a spy - then what is a trace amount?

How much is 'trace'?

Here is an article about Lazar and his radiation trading which puts it all in context:

How Scary Are Online Polonium Sales?

The polonium 210 used to kill a former Russian spy is allegedly available on a U.S. Web site. How scared should we be?

WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Jessica Bennett
Newsweek
Updated: 8:04 p.m. ET Nov. 30, 2006

Nov. 30, 2006 - The radioactive poison that was used to kill former Russian KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko is apparently available online—and on the cheap. United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, which aims to “put the ‘fun’ back into science,” according to its Web site, sells 0.1 microcurie of the substance for just $69, plus shipping and handling (a microcurie is a measurement of radiation). The Albuquerque, N.M.-based company says it has supplied radioactive materials to businesses, government agencies, school teachers and “the science hobbyist” since 1998—and assures customers that they run no risk of being tipped off to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Is it time to panic? Now that traces of radiation were found on two British Airways jets Wednesday, has polonium 210 become the new anthrax? The radioactive element turns out to be a fairly common substance that is used, in minute quantities, in fire detectors, spark plugs, antistatic devices, photo-developing equipment and many industrial processes. It’s released in cigarette smoke and produced by natural uranium decay in soil. Our own bodies even produce tiny amounts in tissue. And now polonium is readily available to anybody with a Web browser and a little ready cash.

The polonium Web site is the work of Bob Lazar, the head and owner of United Nuclear Scientific Supplies. He is no stranger to oddball publicity. He attracted national attention in the late 1980s when he claimed to have worked on crashed alien spaceships at a U.S. military base in Nevada. In 2003, federal agents raided his firm because they believed its chemicals could be used to make explosives; Lazar and the firm have been involved in two federal lawsuits over those claims. In October, Lazar settled a civil case by agreeing to halt the sale of chemical components the Feds said could be used to manufacture “illegal and potentially deadly explosives.” Lazar didn’t return messages left at United Nuclear’s office in Albuquerque. (The answering machine said that the offices were closed due to “unexpected weather.”) Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, says the firm’s previous troubles don’t have anything to do with the current polonium issue.

Before you dive under the bed, it may be helpful to know that it’s actually difficult to get a lethal dose of polonium 210. This isotope of the element emits radioactivity in the form of alpha particles, which can’t penetrate paper let alone human skin. And it has a half-life of 138 days, which means a fresh sample decays into lead in only a few months. To be fatal, polonium must be ingested by swallowing or inhalation, in which case it can cause lung cancer or bone failure. (That’s what experts believe happened to Litvinenko, whose Nov. 23 death was linked to a “major dose.”)

Although the ready availability of a substance as toxic as polonium 210 can’t be a good thing, Lazar’s Web site appears to be perfectly legal. NEWSWEEK was unable to obtain independent confirmation that the substance being sold was indeed polonium, but United Nuclear says it sells only miniscule 0.1 microcurie doses—about 30,000 times below the toxic dose for a person weighing about 150 pounds, and probably not nearly enough to kill, say, a spy. And each dose comes encased in a foil shell that is insoluble and inert in most chemicals. In this sealed form, the polonium will not be absorbed if swallowed, and therefore, “it’s not a health hazard,” says David McIntyre, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). “You would need about 15,000 of our Polonium 210 needle sources at a total cost of about $1 million to have a toxic amount,” says a recent statement on United Nuclear’s Web site. All the isotopes the company sells, according to the statement, are so small the NRC permits their sale without a license.

Even if a “hobbyist” went as far as to order thousands of units from Lazar’s Web site, he would run up against the NRC regulation that restricts sales to 10 units per customer. If this restriction were circumvented, you’d still need to convert the polonium from its capsule form into a powder or liquid, which would require some pretty tricky chemistry. And even then, you’d need an awful lot of capsules—between 50 and 90 percent of the polonium would pass through the gastrointestinal tract and leave the body harmlessly, according to the Health Physics Society, a nonprofit group dedicated to radiation safety. Acquiring enough polonium to poison somebody, and finding a way to administer it, still requires skill and knowledge that few people have. “It’s a pretty James Bond-ish way to kill someone,” says Dr. Oscar Streeter, a radiation oncology professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “If you really wanted to harm someone, polonium is not the easiest way to do it.”

What should we make of Bob Lazar? His hilltop property in Albuquerque is reportedly adorned with a sign that says, WARNING: TRESPASSERS WILL BE USED FOR SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS. The NRC has seen United Nuclear’s Web site, says McIntyre, but doesn’t plan on investigating.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15976951/site/newsweek/

We had radioactive sources in school (I did the A Level Physics Radiaiton module and we had a number of them around) and they are pretty common.

For me the big question is how did they poision him? You couldn't just sprinkle it all over his food and hope some would get through - you'd need a sizable amount to do that.

Oh and why Polonium 210? It would be huge hassle to get your hands on.

 

[misterwibble]

Oh and why Polonium 210?

Polonium 210 is a pure alpha emitter, only 0.001% of decays produce a gamma ray which is itself low energy.

This means it could be smuggled into the country in, say, a plastic bottle without setting off any radiation detectors. The symptoms of the poisoning are identical to that of thallium, which is much more common and well known. It would be logical for medics to asume thallium, by the time symptoms occur, thallium has been flushed from the body.

As an alpha emitter it won't affect dosemters worn by medical staff, X-rays or scanners. The only way to find polonium 210 is to carry out a test looking for it using a specialised laboratory with skilled staff. The decay product is lead 206 which is stable so it won't give away the plot by producing gamma radiation.

Very sneaky, very well thought out and it almost worked. Up Until the 24 th november he was still being treated for thallium poisoning.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

That wasn't quite my point. Its an effective way of killing someone but comes with massive extra hassle and expense.

They can kill people and make it look like an accident. You could always bung a junkie a fustful of twenties to have them stabbed in the street (and then OD the junkie later) or fly in a hitman for 6 figures.

It seems designed to cause the maximum of publicity (like killing someone with anthrax) and due to the nature of the material the finger of suspicion will point at a state. I can only think of two reasons:

1. It was the Ruskies making a very public statement along the lines of: "Don't mess with us or we'll mess you up." They have been making increasingly blatant power plays recently (Yukov, Chechnya, choking power suplies to the Ukraine, etc.) and they do tie into the victim but still it would be the kind of statement a Bond villian might make (whilst stroking their plump and fluffy whte cat).

2. Given how insecure Russian reactors are with enough money to grease enough palms you could probably get what enough but why? To kill someone and get the blame pinned on the Russian government so the investigation gets bogged down in red tape?

Its all very odd and I still find myself struggling to understand the motivation for using such an unusual weapon - like melting down a meteorite or some moon rock to make a bullet out of.

 

[Mythopoeika]

For me the big question is how did they poision him? You couldn't just sprinkle it all over his food and hope some would get through - you'd need a sizable amount to do that.

It was probably mixed into the wasabi, or encapsulated inside a sugar cube.

 

[crunchy5]

For me the big question is how did they poision him? You couldn't just sprinkle it all over his food and hope some would get through - you'd need a sizable amount to do that.

Oh and why Polonium 210? It would be huge hassle to get your hands on.

The amount would I presume be 30,000 microcuries how big that is I don't know, The cost of the hit must have been huge, maybe only a state or an oligarch could afford the cost or even the extravagance of using such a substance. I've read elsewhere that po 210 is used or can be used in nuke bomb triggers so maybe there was some left over from a planned outrage and they used it to silence one of the cogs. I just read in the Guardian that if we want to extradite the main suspect we would have to agree to extradite Boris Berezovsky back to Russia, so that could be a reason for the Ruskies to have set the wheels in motion.

 

[Anonymous]

Emps - is 30,000 microcuries enough to roll into a ball about the size of a grain of salt?

 

[techybloke666]

It was probably mixed into the wasabi, or encapsulated inside a sugar cube.

I always wondered what made Wasabi so hot

 

[ramonmercado]

Published online: 1 December 2006; | doi:10.1038/news061127-17
Unanswered questions after Russian spy poisoning
Despite intense media attention, many aspects of the death of Alexander Litvinenko remain mysterious. [email protected] looks at what's known about the substance involved.
Jim Giles







Radioactive material is on sale: but for polonium-210, only in tiny quantities.

Getty

Do you need to be an intelligence agent to get hold of polonium-210?

No. Contrary to initial reports, the radioactive substance that last month killed Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who had been living in London, could probably be obtained by someone without contacts at nuclear reactors, the sites at which polonium-210 is manufactured.

In the United States, tiny amounts can be bought from various supply companies — but one would need to buy thousands in order to amass a dangerous dose. Larger amounts of the substance are found in some commercial products, such as anti-static devices used by the plastics industry. These devices are strictly regulated and are usually only available for lease rather than purchase. Specifications available on manufacturers' websites suggest that they contain enough polonium-210 to kill someone, says Paddy Regan, a physicist at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK.

How much was used to kill Litvinenko?

No one knows for sure, but the time he took to die — around three weeks after being admitted to hospital — gives a rough clue.

Data from survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, as well as from nuclear accidents, suggest that a dose of more than 15 sieverts kills within days, as the radiation destroys gut tissue. People exposed to less than 5 Sv usually live for longer than three weeks and may even survive the initial poisoning. A dose within the range of 5-15 Sv is equivalent to the amount of radiation received by someone standing within 800 metres of the Hiroshima bomb.

If ingested, perhaps as little as one ten-millionth of a gram of polonium-210 could deliver this dose. Estimates on the lethal dose vary widely.

Why has polonium-210 been found in hotels and on planes?

Police are still investigating, but it is possible that Litvinenko spread tiny amounts of polonium-210 after being poisoned. The substance could have come out in his sweat or tears, for example.

Theories about the planes that have been grounded after finding hints of radiation on board are even more speculative. Authorities have not said what level of radiation has been detected or even whether the source is polonium-210.

If polonium-210 is found to be the source, further questions need to be answered. The substance decays by emitting alpha particles, which can be stopped by something as flimsy as a sheet of paper. If the polonium-210 was brought from Russia, as many observers have speculated, contamination could easily have been prevented by simply keeping it in a tightly sealed bottle.


Story from [email protected]:
http://news.nature.com//news/2006/061127/061127-17.html

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Emps - is 30,000 microcuries enough to roll into a ball about the size of a grain of salt?

Its difficult to talk about amounts in microcuries but it'd be a few micrograms and you'd possibly need to have it mixed in with something else or it'd be very difficult to handle. In comparison a grain of salt is around 100-50 micrograms and measures about a third of a millimetre a side.

You don't want to have your paymasters shelling out a lot of cash for it only to not be able to find it when it came time to deploy it. And hw to deploy it? The task is to ensure someone eats somethng the size of a salt grain hidden inside a meal? For some reason I picture it being used in some kind of delicay - like being presented with a single chocolate covered strawberry.

What I'm unclear about is how it killed him. It is a strong alpha emitter but is also highly toxic.

 

[Anonymous]

It is puzzling how they could get something so much smaller than a grain of salt transported over here, then put it in the spy's sushi or tea.

Ah - got it ! - they could put it into a sugar crystal such as the ones that Boots manufacture.

I buy Arnica from Boots and it is now in the form of very small sugar crystal balls in a push button dispenser tube.

Drop one in his tea when he is not looking.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Ah but then how can you guarantee it is in the tea and not stuck to the side of the cup? Its not like a poison that dissolves.

------------
Any Sheffield Forteans fancy nipping out and taking a snap?

"Polonium" Restaurant Capitalizes on Ex-KGB Spy Case

Business: 5 December 2006, Tuesday.

The owners of a restaurant in northern England are having their hands full these days, unexpectedly capitalizing on the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

The reason for the rising popularity of the establishment in Sheffield is in its name - "The Polonium Restaurant".

Ever since word broke that the former Russian spy was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210, the place has been fully packed.

The Polish owner say the place was not named after the radioactive stuff, but a Polish folk band he played in some 30 years ago.

The notorious name, however, is paying off for the restaurant with business up as much as 30 %.

www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=73614

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Litvinenko's death was murder, says Yard


Scotland Yard are now treating the mysterious death of former KGB agent, Alexander Litvinenko, as murder. Two weeks after he succumbed to polonium-210 poisoning, detectives have concluded he was deliberately killed.

In a statement last night, the Metropolitan police said the team investigating Mr Litvinenko's death 'have reached the stage where it is felt appropriate to treat it as an allegation of murder'.The statement said 'many lines of inquiry, both in the UK and Russia' were being pursued and that detectives were keeping an open mind and 'methodically following the evidence'. Article continues While Scotland Yard are now ruling out the possibility that Mr Litvinenko deliberately or accidentally poisoned himself, police stressed they have reached no conclusions as to the means employed, the motive or the identity of those who might be responsible.

An early rumour had suggested Mr Litvinenko had possibly been responsible for his own death or had taken poison in order to implicate the Russian authorities.

Friends of Mr Litvinenko said last night they understood he was due to be buried as soon as today in a private Muslim ceremony in London.

However, other reports suggested the funeral could be delayed and take place later in the week.

Mr Litvinenko, who will be buried in a sealed coffin, converted to Islam shortly before his death and was given the Muslim equivalent of the last rites in hospital. Mr Litvinenko's father said his son converted to Islam shortly before his death on November 23.'He told me of his decision two days before he died,' Walter Litvinenko told Radio Free Europe.'He said, 'Papa, I have to talk to you about something serious. I've become a Muslim'.' He added that his son had made an 'important personal decision' that would be respected.

Last night the Interfax news agency reported traces of polonium had been found at the British embassy in Moscow. Testing is thought to have been ordered after Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, businessmen who met Mr Litvinenko before he was poisoned, met embassy officials.

Mr Lugovoi, a former KGB officer who now runs a juice factory, has said he will cooperate with Scotland Yard's inquiry. He is due to be interviewed today.

The Moscow prosecutor general's office said it was cooperating with officers from Scotland Yard despite 'some departures from international standards' in the request for assistance.

British officers are only being allowed to sit in on interrogations by Russian prosecutors.

Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic and an associate of the dead man, who tested positive for polonium-210, left University College hospital in London yesterday and said he felt well.

Earlier, he said he had tried to warn Mr Litvinenko they were being targeted by 'people linked with some clandestine organisations, not directly controlled by the Russian establishment but from Russia ... generally retired people from the security service'.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/articl ... 09,00.html?

 

[crunchy5]

This sort of sums up my view on the matter.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10098

If a would-be novelist – desperate for money and some kind of recognition – put the events surrounding the death of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko into a fictional narrative, one can only imagine the kind of reviews it would generate. An improbable plot – caricatures instead of characters – and, in the end, just plain unbelievable. After all, why in the name of all that's holy would Vladimir Putin launch what amounts to the first act of nuclear terrorism – and on British soil, to boot?

Yet that is the narrative written in the screaming headlines of Britain's tabloid press, and their hysterical coverage is reflected here in the States. The involvement of the FSB, Russia's intelligence service, is almost taken for granted: the only disagreement seems to be over whether it was Putin, or "rogue" elements, who poisoned Litvinenko with radioactive polonium-210. The conspiracy theorists have a big problem, however: all known suspects, far from being potential FSB agents, are known for their anti-Putin views.

Another big problem for the "Putin did it" advocates is that the truth about Litvinenko is coming out: he wasn't the "human rights" campaigner and noble dissident his supporters have portrayed, but a man who hoped to profit from his inside knowledge of KGB/FSB affairs. He was also a blackmailer, and may have been involved in the smuggling of nuclear materials from inside the Soviet Union to the West and parts unknown. He was, in short, a man so enmeshed in the underground world of the Russian mafia, in shady deals and off-the-books arrangements, that he could have been the victim of any number of criminal gangs.

The details of Litvinenko's scheme to extort money from prominent Russians is detailed by the Guardian:

"Litvinenko claimed to have made contact with senior sources in the heart of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, who would supply him with a stream of confidential dossiers on any target that the 43-year-old exile requested. These documents would, according to Litvinenko, be used to 'blackmail' some of Russia's most shadowy and formidable figures. It was simple: either they would pay or the world would learn their blackest secrets."

According to Julia Svetlichnaja, a Russian doctoral candidate at the University of Westminster's Center for the Study of Democracy, Litvinenko told her:

"'He was going to blackmail or sell sensitive information about all kinds of powerful people including oligarchs, corrupt officials and sources in the Kremlin,' she said. 'He mentioned a figure of £10,000 they would pay each time to stop him broadcasting these FSB documents. Litvinenko was short of money and was adamant that he could obtain any files he wanted.'"

Could this have had something to do with his untimely demise? If so, then Litvinenko's death has little to do with the KGB, and more to do with the murky shadowland in which he operated. As this piece in The Australian put it:

"It is thought the former Russian spy might have been killed in London after a deal that went wrong with associates involved in the ruthless world of Russian business. According to security sources, investigators are looking at the former spy's dealings with Russian businessmen involved in the lucrative energy sector and the shadowy world of private security. 'We are looking at a very long list of Litvinenko's friends and foes since he has been in London,' one source said.

"The list includes exotic figures ranging from billionaire businessmen, former Kremlin spies, and KGB agents to underworld bosses. In the six years that he was in Britain, Litvinenko appeared to have acquired a formidable collection of friends and enemies. Although he described himself as a journalist, Litvinenko tried unsuccessfully to muscle in on several lucrative business deals with Russians.

"On the day he fell ill, he was attempting to broker a gas and oil exploration deal involving a British conglomerate that he claimed to represent. He was envious of the money many of his former colleagues were making."

Even more problematic for Litvinenko's elevation to sainthood is the allegation that he was involved in smuggling nuclear materials out of the former Soviet Union. The Independent reports:

"Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned former Russian agent, told the Italian academic he met on the day he fell ill that he had organized the smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia for his security service employers."

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

If the scale of Litvinenko's avarice allowed him to go into business as a blackmailer, then surely the smuggling of nuclear materials wasn't out of the question. Here is yet another business opportunity for an ex-KGB agent – utilizing his old contacts to muscle in on the black-market trade in nukes. Given his involvement with Chechen terrorists, and his declared intention of overthrowing the Russian government by force, the possibilities are terrifying. In this context, it could be that the nuking of Litvinenko was a byproduct of a nuclear smuggling scheme – an accident rigged to look like a deliberate poisoning.

The accidental poisoning scenario is made more credible by the trail of radioactivity investigators are following, which not only extends to as many as two dozen locations in London, but also apparently extends across Europe via the three or four airliners that tested positive for suspicious concentrations of polonium-210. Thousands of passengers have been alerted by British Airways and told to come in for testing if they traveled on a suspect flight. What piqued official interest in these particular flights was apparently the fact that one or more suspects were known to have taken them, most notably the three Russians who met with Litvinenko in the Millennium Hotel – the site with the highest level of polonium-210 contamination.

The evolving semi-official story appears to be pinning the poisoning on this group of three Russians who met with Litvinenko in the Pine Bar at the Millennium. These guys supposedly were sent by a "rogue" FSB faction with its own murky reasons for offing the Russian "dissident." All three are denying it, and one of them, Andrei Lugovoi, told the News of the World: "We suspect that someone has been trying to frame us. Someone passed this stuff onto us… so as to point the finger at us and distract the police.''

As the investigation widens and speculation is rife, the Litvinenko affair is swirling with numerous subplots that seem designed to divert attention away from the facts and conjure a smokescreen thicker than San Francisco fog. Litvinenko is not only depicted by his fan club as having been hot on the trail of Anna Politkovskaya's killer, but he was also supposedly onto the "real story" of how the Russian state dismantled the Yukos energy conglomerate – with lots of dirty linen hidden away in a KGB closet to which Litvinenko was mysteriously given the key.

It's funny how the source of these tall tales always turns out to be one of his fellow ex-KGB comrades, many of whom are now in the pay of exiled Russian oligarchs, such as Boris Berezovsky, or Leonid Nevzlin – who claims Litvinenko visited him in Israel to procure certain incriminating documents "proving" the calumny of the Kremlin in the Yukos affair.

The fogger effect doesn't get any thicker, however, than with the accusations emanating from Yegor Gaidar, a former Russian prime minister, who claims that he, too, has been poisoned by the FSB during a conference held in Ireland. Of course, Gaidar and his spokespeople, including his daughter, never openly accuse the Kremlin of dosing the ex-prime minister with poison, but the implication is clear – although we never get an actual doctor saying this, only Gaidar's daughter. Gaidar, by the way, seems to be recovering from whatever it was that ailed him. We are now getting to the point where every upset stomach in the Russian "exile" community is going to be attributed to Putin's professional poisoners. It would be funny if the media didn't eat it up so readily.

Oh, one more thing, and that is the timing: is it just a coincidence that this tsunami of accusations against the Kremlin rose up just prior to an important Nato summit meeting held in Riga? Or that Britain and Russia were on the verge of negotiating a new extradition treaty that would have made it much easier for the Kremlin to extradite Berezovsky to Russia, where he is wanted on charges of murder, embezzlement, and extortion?

Berezovsky, who employed Litvinenko while he was alive and is using him in death as the symbol of Putin's malignity, is the key figure in all this: the man slain Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov called Russia's "godfather." The real Mafia could learn a thing or two from Berezovsky, who, Klebnikov averred, assassinated his business rivals – one with an obscure nerve toxin – while the authorities stood by and let it happen on account of the oligarch's connections with top Kremlin officials. When Putin rose to power, however, and turned against Berezovsky – his former supporter and patron – the rule of the oligarchs was over. Berezovsky, Nevzlin, and the others fled Russia, and haven't stopped plotting to discredit and ultimately overthrow their nemesis ever since.

The War Party has long been breathing down Vladimir Putin's neck, condemning him as the reincarnation of Stalin and absurdly averring that he plans on recreating the Soviet empire in all its former misshapen "glory." The regime-changers, as I have written before, have Putin's Russia in their sights, and the Litvinenko affair is the first act of what promises to be a very long and drawn-out melodrama. Whether it will wind up a comedy or a tragedy is hard to tell at the moment – but I'd place my bets on the latter in the long run.

 

[Analis]

This story of blackmail gives too plenty of new motives for the Kremlin or KGB/FSB agents (active or retired). THe files eemed to come from the FSB after all.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Spies sent 'to seize cash from Yukos exiles'


In his last investigation before he was murdered, Alexander Litvinenko claimed to have uncovered a plan by the Russian Federal Security Service to claw back millions of pounds from wealthy Russians who fled to London and other Western capitals.

Most of the exiled executives are said to have worked for Yukos, the $10 billion energy giant seized by the Kremlin. Litvinenko had visited some of the alleged targets to warn them that the Russian intelligence services planned to intimidate them and their families to recover millions of dollars. He also claimed to have discovered the amount of money that those on the list were expected to hand over, and that teams of Russian agents were being sent abroad to track them down.

Most of those on the list already knew the danger they faced: a number of former Yukos officials have been murdered or jailed or have disappeared in recent years.

Stephen Curtis, the British managing director of a company that had been the main shareholder in Yukos, died in a helicopter crash close to his palatial home in Dorset in March 2004. He died a fortnight after he went to Scotland Yard saying that he had received death threats. He told detectives that he feared that a hit team had been sent from Moscow to assassinate him.

Yuri Chaika, the Russian prosecutor-general, who has taken over the investigation into the Litvinenko affair, has been conducting a fresh inquiry in Moscow into the Yukos affair. Official approaches that President Putin has made in the past three years to Whitehall and other Western governments has, however, failed to persaude them to send back a single person on the Kremlin's wanted list. Mr Chaika announced this week that he was extending his Yukos investigation until March, although Russian officials do not expect governments such as Britain to change their minds. Mr Chaika might now use the Litvinenko affair as an excuse to send prosecutors to London to seek access to exiled Russian millionaires.

At least a dozen former Yukos personnel have been given asylum in Britain, including a former vice-president, Alexander Temerko, and senior figures such as Dmitry Maruyev and Natalia Chernyshova, whom the Russians have charged with fraud. All deny any wrongdoing. Three attempts by the authorities in Moscow to have the 12 sent back to Russia were blocked by the English courts.

Litvinenko claimed in his dossier that the FSB decided to take matters into its own hands to recover billions of dollars through a covert campaign of intimidation, dirty tricks and murder. He flew to Israel in secret weeks before he was murdered to meet Leonid Nevzlin, one of the most wanted of the targets.

Mr Nevzlin was second in command at Yukos and the business partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is in a Siberian jail sentenced to nine years for fraud. Litvinenko was too scared to write down all his information and insisted on telling Mr Nevzlin and others in person about FSB plans for them. Mr Nevzlin said that the Litvinenko investigation "shed light on most significant aspects of the Yukos affair". He has now passed the dossier to Scotland Yard, believing that Litvinenko's delving into the Yukos connection was a reason his enemies at the Kremlin wanted him silenced.

Detectives investigating his poisoning last week questioned as a witness another former KGB officer, Yuri Shvets, who knew Litvinenko and was aware of his dealings with Yukos. There are some who have questioned Litvinenko's motive for getting involved in the Yukos affair. Friends such as Alex Goldfarb said that the former KGB spy, who was given British citizenship last month, wanted to illustrate how the Kremlin was sending hit teams abroad to deal with its enemies.

A London-based academic, Julia Svetlichnaja, claims that Litivineko confided in her that his plan was to blackmail some of those on the FSB target list. Ms Svetlichnaja, 33, who is writing a book on the Chechen conflict, said that she received more than 100 e-mails from the dissident.

Litvinenko knew Curtis, whose job it was to set up this impenetrable network of accounts for Yukos executives that stretched from Mauritius to the Dutch Antilles.An the inquest into his death, his wife said Mr Curtis had received threatening letters and had told relatives that if anything "untoward" happened to him "it will not be an accident". The jury ruled that the crash was an accident.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 77,00.html

 

[Anonymous]

Found this on how Polonium might be spreading everywhere - as Emps said, it is unusual because it is only produced in microscopic amounts and is very difficult and expensive to make.

That means it should not be spreading everywhere like it is;

Monday, December 11, 2006

Newton explains Litvinenko mystery

As each intriguing new detail emerges from the mysterious murder of ex-Soviet spy Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned by radioactive polonium-210 (Po), I find myself especially puzzled by one curiosity: why is there so much radiation from one poisoning?

It seems that wherever they look, every day since his death, the police have been finding traces of radiation, sprinkled like clues in a dastardly Agatha Christie novel: polonium-210 contamination has been found in hotels, restaurants, offices and aircraft in the UK and abroad...

...As Polonium-210 decays, an alpha particle is released from the atom with such momentum that it has a recoil effect, kicking out adjacent atoms. An alpha particle has a mass of 4 atomic units, which is about 2% of the weight of a Po atom. So from conservation of momentum, if the atom were isolated in mid-air, the Po remnant would recoil with about 2% of the velocity of the alpha particle. This implies an awful lot of kinetic energy for one atom – well in excess of chemical bond energies.

This could allow a small amount of the material to effectively spray radiation around. In fact, if a solution containing polonium-210 is held in a jar, it will start to creep up the sides of the jar like a kind of radioactive liquid popularly found in horror films....

...But, unlike me, Priest is unsurprised by the trail of radiation scattered across London. He reckons the radiation was been transmitted in the same way a disease pathogen is passed around. “Litvinenko probably had around 3-thousand-million Becquerels and he would only have to transmit a very small fraction of that – just 1% - on a glass he drank from. Then the barman touches the glass and picks up tens of thousands of Bequerel. He then touches the bar, and the glass mixes with others in the sink. Other people touch the bar, then go home and touch their furniture…”

...But each time it is transmitted, the radioactive concentration is less, making the detective work simpler for those following the trail.

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/

 

[techybloke666]

this post should be in my depleted uranium thread but its good here too !

Experts agree that this was no crime carried out by amateurs. Polonium cannot be obtained by surfing the Web, and has to be used within a limited time, before it loses its impact. Large-scale production such as in a nuclear reactor would be needed to produce sufficient amounts to cause death. Another way of obtaining it is from depleted uranium shells . It is also used in the photographic industry as a static eliminator.

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?d ... title=APFN

same shells we left all over Iraq and else where ?

 

[ramonmercado]

Published online: 20 December 2006; | doi:10.1038/news061218-9
Polonium official danger rating may get upgrade
Atomic agency considering revising opinion of spy poison.
Nicola Jones



The poisoning of former Soviet spy Alexander Litvinenko has prompted the International Atomic Energy Agency to consider whether the safety rating of the substance involved — polonium-210 — should be upgraded.

Litvinenko died in London last month after ingesting an unknown amount of polonium-210, which decays by emitting particles and is fatal in doses of milligrams or below. Distribution of the substance is strictly controlled in Europe and the United States, but tiny sub-lethal amounts are present in products that can be bought without a government licence, such as antistatic brushes used by photographers.

Officials at the atomic energy agency say they are considering whether the danger rating used to compare polonium-210 with other radionuclides used in industry needs to be revised. The substance currently rates 4 out of 5 on a scale in which the most dangerous radiation sources — such as the cobalt used in cancer treatments — are rated at 1.


Story from [email protected]:
http://news.nature.com//news/2006/061218/061218-9.html

 

[ramonmercado]

Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Nanowires Conduct Photocurrent
Self-assembled nanotubes that conduct current when illuminated take us one step closer to cheap molecular photonic devices.
By Prachi Patel-Predd
Photocopiers, infrared detectors, and optical receivers in fiber-optic telecommunication systems all depend on photoconductors--materials that conduct more electric current when exposed to light. Made on a nanometer scale, photoconductors could lead to a variety of tiny optoelectronic devices potentially useful in future generations of nanoelectronics, chemical sensors, and eventually provide clues to the fabrication of tiny solar cells.


Now Japanese researchers, led by Takuzo Aida, a professor in the department of chemistry and biotechnology at the University of Tokyo, have made a photoconductor from two different organic molecules that self-assemble into long, hollow nanotubes. The nanowires conduct almost no current in the dark, but when hit with light, they conduct 10,000 times more current. This could lead to cheap nanodevices that self-assemble out of a chemical solution.


To make a photoconductor, it's important to have a junction between two segregated layers: one that donates charge and another that accepts it. Previously made photoconductors do not have separate donor and acceptor layers at the nanometer level, says Aida. The new photoconductor, which the researchers describe in this week's Science, "is the first one that provides a nanoscale donor-acceptor heterojunction and exhibits a photoconductive property," Aida says.


The researchers create a solution of two organic molecules, trinitrofluorenone (TNF) and hexabenzocoronene (HBC), in a solvent. When they expose this solution to methanol vapors at 25 °C, the organic molecules self-assemble into 16-nanometer-wide hollow tubes. The 3-nanometer-thick walls of the nanotubes are made of TNF layers, which act as the electron-accepting layer, laminating the HBC electron-donating layer.


When the researchers place the photoconductors between electrodes and apply a voltage, almost no current flows. But when illuminated with ultraviolet or visible light, the nanowires conduct electricity. "The electrical current under illumination is four orders of magnitude greater than that in the dark," Aida says. "Such a large on-off ratio is very important for optoelectronic applications."



Right now, the nanowires' conductivity changes in response to light; they do not absorb light to generate electric current as solar cells do. But the layered structure of the nanotubes lays down a blueprint for converting light into electricity, because the interface between the donor and acceptor layers can be thought of as a p-n junction, the basic unit of a solar cell, says Frank Wurthner, a chemistry professor at the University of Wurzburg, in Germany.


Walter Smith, a physicist involved in nanoscale photoconductor research at Haverford College, calls the new work exciting because it's the first example of a self-assembling system with a well-defined separation between donor and acceptor layers. "People are able to make very small solar cells, but being able to self-assemble them hopefully lowers the manufacture cost," he says. Self-assembly also gives "extraordinary atomic-level precision in the relative placement of the components linking together to form a structure."


An important advantage of the Japanese researchers' method is that the molecules spontaneously assemble when they are exposed to methanol vapors. It's important to have an external cue that triggers self-assembly, Smith says, because "eventually when we're trying to build more-complex systems we can use different cues to initiate the self-assembly of different parts of the system." The Japanese researchers' work, he adds, "is a big step towards understanding the basic science of what drives self-assembly."

http://www.technologyreview.com/NanoTech/17917/

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Litvinenko's lunch guest is arrested


The Italian investigator who had lunch with the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko on the day he fell ill has been arrested on suspicion of arms smuggling.

Mario Scaramella was arrested on Sunday as he flew from Britain to his home town of Naples. The arrest followed a warrant issued by Italian magistrates investigating claims of arms trafficking, revealing state secrets and slander.

Part of the investigation is related to a seizure of grenades, following a tip-off by Mr Scaramella. Four Ukranians were arrested and are currently on trial, but police have expressed suspicions about how detailed Mr Scaramella's information was.

He claims the information came from Mr Litvinenko.

continues

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ison26.xml

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Moscow Links Spy Poisoning To Yukos Case

Moscow — Russia's Prosecutor General's Office on Wednesday produced a startling new twist in the investigation of the killing of Alexander V. Litvinenko, the former KGB officer who died in London in November of radiation poisoning.
It announced that it was investigating the possible involvement of former executives of Yukos Oil, the company dismantled by a prosecutorial assault last year.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, the prosecutor's office said its investigation indicated a link between the poisoning of Litvinenko and criminal cases under way against Yukos executives. It singled out Leonid B. Nevzlin, a major shareholder and partner of the company's jailed chief executive, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky.

The statement did not elaborate on any evidence that might link Nevzlin and others to Litvinenko's death, which was caused by a lethal dose of a radioactive material, polonium 210.

The accusation nevertheless was an effort on the part of the Russian government to tie Litvinenko's death to accusations of a convoluted web of economic and other crimes that destroyed Yukos, once Russia's richest company.

The prosecution of Yukos and Khodorkovsky was widely seen as a Kremlin-led campaign against a company seen as defiant of President Vladimir V. Putin and against a man seen as a potential political threat.

A spokesman for Nevzlin, a close associate of Khodorkovsky's who is wanted on charges in Russia and lives in self-imposed exile in Israel, dismissed the new accusations as a continuation of that campaign.

“We all know the methods of the KGB,” the spokesman, Amir Dan, said in a telephone interview, referring to the defunct Soviet security agency. “The statement is ridiculous. It is not worth any comment.”

When Litvinenko fell ill on Nov. 1, officials in Russia ridiculed the accusations of Russian involvement. But when he died on Nov. 23 from the effects of radioactive poisoning, investigators here agreed to assist British detectives, who visited for several days this month.

The statement from the Prosecutor General's Office said the investigations of Yukos had now been combined with that of Litvinenko's death.

“A version is being verified according to which the contractors of these crimes may be one and the same group of people whose names are on the international wanted list” for committing grave crimes, the prosecutors' statement said. It specified Nevzlin as one of them but did not identify any others.

Nevzlin has long evaded Russian requests for extradition — a source of diplomatic irritation between Russia and Israel. On Sunday he arrived in the United States on vacation, Dan said, prompting new demands by the Russians that the Americans arrest him.

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=dfdc1b ... 4b5aa5b880

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Mystery man caught on CCTV may hold key to poison plot

Detectives investigating the murder of Alexander Litvinenko are trying to trace a Russian businessman who flew to Britain at the same time as a consignment of deadly polonium-210 was allegedly smuggled into London.

The man was spotted on a flight from Hamburg sitting beside Dimtri Kovtun, another Russian whom German police are investigating for trafficking the radioactive material used to poison the former KGB spy. Officers have studied CCTV footage from airports at Hamburg and London and are understood to believe that the two men were travelling together. However, the mystery figure disappeared after leaving Heathrow with Mr Kovtun. The name he used on the flight and the passport presented to immigration officials does not show up on any hotel register in the capital. It is believed that he met up again with Mr Kovtun in London on November 1, the day Litvinenko fell ill.

Mr Kovtun was one of the last people to see Litvinenko before he collapsed. Scotland Yard will not say if it regards Mr Kovtun as a victim, a witness or a suspect.

German authorities say that traces of polonium-210 were found at a number of locations visited by Mr Kovtun while he was in Hamburg at the end of October. Russian authorities refused German requests to carry out check for polonium on the Aeroflot flight that Mr Kovtun took to Hamburg.

Martin Koehnke, Hamburg's Chief Prosecutor, said: "We assume that Mr Kovtun arrived on October 28 on a flight from Moscow and that he was already contaminated with polonium-210." He said it appeared that from the moment Mr Kovtun landed at Hamburg airport he started spreading the radioative substance, including to the car sent to collect him. German police are puzzled why no polonium-210 was found on the Germanwings flight that Mr Kovtun and the mystery Russian travelled on to London.

Mr Kovtun remains in a Moscow clinic where doctors say that they are still testing him for radiation poisoning.

Russian police say that they believe Mr Kovtun was also a target for the assassin, and the businessman vehemently denies any role in the poison plot. The British team is reportedly still seeking more information from Mr Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy, his business partner. Polonium-210 was discovered on two British flights on which Mr Lugovoy travelled to London in October. On October 25, he took BA 875 and stayed at the Sheraton Park Lane. Radiation was found at both locations. It was also found on BA 872, which Mr Lugovoy took on October 31, and at the Millenium Hotel, in Grosvenor Square, where he and Mr Kovtun stayed and where they entertained Litvinenko.

Experts also isolated traces at a third hotel, the Parkes in Knightsbridge, where both men stayed during another trip to London from October 16 to 18 when they flew on Transaero, the Russian carrier.

Mr Lugovoy, who also remains in the Moscow clinic, denies any role in the plot and claims that he is being framed.

Russian authorities say none of the poison was found on the Boeing 737s used by Transaero.

The Russian Prosecutor-General is trying to shift the focus away from Moscow as his officers prepare to travel to London in the new year to interview a number of Russian exiles. They will include Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch critical of Mr Putin, and Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen separatist envoy.

Friends of Litvinenko fear that the Kremlin will use the investigation to try to settle scores. This week the Prosecutor General announced he wants to question a number of figures from Yukos, the oil giant, whose assets were seized. He named Leonid Nevzlin, a former executive.

Mr Nevzlin fled to Israel in 2003 but flew to New Jersey at the weekend for a holiday in America. Russian officials yesterday asked the US to arrest him. A spokesman for Mr Nevzlin denied any role in the plot.

Mr Nevzlin told The Times how Litvinenko had travelled to Tel Aviv to hand over a file on how Russia's Federal Security Service planned to claw back millions from wealthy Russians now living in the West.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 05,00.html

 

[crunchy5]

Another good take on this affair.

They're making a movie about the Litvinenko affair, but if Hollywood hews to the narrative dished out by the British tabloids, then I wouldn't count on it being a box office hit. After all, the idea that the Kremlin would assassinate such an insignificant "dissident" by poisoning him with $10 million worth of rare polonium – and leaving a radioactive trail a mile wide back to the Kremlin's doorstep – is so implausible that no one could possibly believe it. Unless, of course, it is presented as "news," rather than entertainment – two categories that are often indistinguishable from each other, at least in the U.S.

The journalistic lynch mob that jumped on Vladimir Putin, tying him to the alleged murder of Alexander Litvinenko, is wiping egg off its collective face as new evidence comes to light. Not that this crowd needs much in the way of evidence to convince them of the Kremlin's utter perfidy: in the case of Litvinenko's bizarre poisoning with a radioactive substance, polonium-210, they didn't need any. All they had to do was print press releases handed out by Boris Berezovsky's slick public-relations operation and decry the supposed degeneration of Russian "democracy" from the good old days of Boris Yeltsin, when it was possible to steal entire industries without worrying about going to jail.

To really get a handle on the truth about this mysterious affair, what we have to do is look at what Charles Krauthammer and Max Boot are saying – and then draw the opposite conclusion. The two of them, naturally, accuse Putin of murdering Litvinenko, without – of course – bothering with such mundane details as the extremely odd method of utilizing such an unusual weapon, or what the Kremlin could possibly hope to gain. Their fact-free screeds are all supposition, and both evade the central reality of this case: as the Moscow Times points out, "The common thread linking all the players in Litvinenko's death is that they have all worked for Berezovsky."

Now that the radioactive trail has been followed to Germany, however, the investigation is taking a new turn:

"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."

On a trip to Germany, Dmitry Kovtun – who met with Litvinenko on the day of his poisoning, along with Andrei Lugovoi, a former "security" man for Berezovsky – shed radioactivity in several Hamburg locations. The German trip was undertaken before the meeting with Litvinenko. Kovtun is now apparently in a hospital in Moscow, along with Lugovoi. The Berliner Zeitung quotes a police source as saying: "'We know that there has been a demand for nuclear materials in terrorist circles for several years,' … adding that Litvinenko's partners could have been involved in smuggling schemes."

Litvinenko, we know, was desperate for cash, and was reportedly involved in a blackmailing scheme targeting several Russian mafia figures and politicians. Now we learn, according to the London Times,

"Sources in Spain last week said he had crossed Russian mafia figures. They claimed he had provided information that helped lead to the arrest in May of nine mafia members, including a senior gang leader with interests in Russia and Spain."

The nine include Alexander Gofstein, a lawyer for the Yukos oil company of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Oleg Vorontsov, a former high-ranking adviser to Boris Yeltsin; they are charged with money-laundering. Another figure in this murky drama, scamster and professional Russophobe Mario Scaramella, was recently arrested for… weapons smuggling.

We don't know the specifics of what exactly happened: a horrible accident that resulted from an attempt to smuggle polonium, a mafia hit against a stool pigeon, or, perhaps, a little of both. What we do know, however, is that the accusations lodged against Putin and his government by major media outlets in the West are completely without any basis in fact, and that coverage of this bizarre affair has been absolutely shameful.

Big Western oil companies, barred from scarfing up Russian energy reserves by Putin's invocation of "national security," are busy ramping up a campaign to smear the Russian president as the reincarnation of Stalin, and – absurdly – portray the Russian mafia chieftains as "political prisoners" sitting in the "gulag." If only the Russians would let the Westerners in, they would no longer be bothered by accusations of neo-Stalinism, and known criminals – such as Berezovsky and the Chechen terrorist "government-in-exile" being given shelter in Londongrad – would be quickly extradited to face the music. Instead, criminals like Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, and Leonid Nevzlin, who looted the Russian economy and then stashed their stolen wealth overseas, are treated as if they are Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov rolled into one.

One needn't approve of Putin or his policies to note that the Russian president and his government are victims of a setup, and a rather obvious one at that. As former Ambassador David Fischer, posted in several Eastern European countries during the Cold War era, remarked, the story being put out by the Berezovsky spin machine "just doesn't add up." What does add up, however, is that powerful economic and political interests, both here and in Britain, have targeted Putin's Russia for "regime change" – and are apparently willing to go to any lengths to accomplish their ends.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10228

 

[Skeptical01]

This story has fallen off the radar a bit here in the States. Thanks for posting the updates. Wow, what a complicated mess!

S

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Polonium traces found at Italian restaurant in London


An Italian fish restaurant in Mayfair was named today as the latest London location to have been contaminated with the radioactive isotope that killed the Russian former spy Alexander Litvinenko. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said polonium-210 had been discovered at the Pescatori Restaurant in Dover Street.

The restaurant is believed to be among the locations visited by three Russian men who met Mr Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair on the day he fell ill.

The HPA said that remedial work had been carried out and the restaurant, a small family-run establishment specialising in seafood, was now open for business. 'As a result of a recent request from the Metropolitan Police, the Health Protection Agency has carried out monitoring of Pescatori Restaurant in Dover Street, Mayfair, which has been linked to the Litvinenko police investigation,' the agency said. 'Some evidence of contamination with polonium 210 has been detected. 'Remediation measures have been carried out successfully at the restaurant, which is now open for business. On the basis of the monitoring results received there is no public health concern.' The HPA said it did not anticipate any significant health risk to staff or customers of the restaurant. However, it said that as a precautionary measure, staff had been offered urine tests to check for contamination.

Luigi Lavarini, managing director of Pescatori restaurants, said he had only learned of the contamination on Wednesday.

He said that police had telephoned to say they wanted to come and see the restaurant and arrived a short time later with public health officials. After sweeping the restaurant with a 'little detection machine' they were told there was some evidence of polonium contamination.

However, he said that analysis had shown the level of contamination was not large enough to pose any significant health risks. 'We have been given a clean bill of health to open this evening by the Health Protection Agency,' Mr Lavarini said. 'It is all within acceptable levels, it is not a problem for us working here or for the public. 'Of course, it is a little bit dramatic but we want to comply as much as possible with their investigation.' Mr Lavarini said the restaurant staff had not been asked about any specific names by police, whom he praised for handling the matter 'discreetly'. 'We opened our reservation book to them and we did not ask too many questions,' he said. He added that none of the names of the three Russians who met Mr Litvinenko on the day he fell ill - Dmitry Kovtun, Andrei Lugovoi and Vyacheslav Sokolenko - appeared in the restaurant's reservations book.

However, he said this was not a complete record as some customers ate there without making a reservation. There were officers in the Mayfair area where Russian business people worked, he added.

Mr Lavarini said that his 'main concern' was the health and safety of his staff and customers, but that he did not believe them be in any danger. 'We have been told that the risks are minimal and almost zero,' he said. 'But for precautionary purposes we have to give a urine sample for testing. It is not expected that anything will be found.'

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2533125.html

 

[OneWingedBird]

you've read the news, now watch the movie:

Depp 'to produce Litvinenko film'

Hollywood actor Johnny Depp may produce and star in a film about the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, according to reports.

It will be based on a yet-unpublished book called Sasha's Story: The Life and Death of a Russian Spy, written by Alan Cowell of the New York Times.

Warner Bros bought the rights to the book for Depp's production company to develop, trade newspaper Variety said.

Mr Litvinenko, 43, died in University College Hospital, London, in November.

His body contained radioactive polonium-210.

Friends of Mr Litvinenko believe he was poisoned by the Russian government because of his strong criticism of President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin has dismissed suggestions it was involved in any way, and police in both the UK and Russia are investigating the death.

Under the terms of Depp's production company, Infinitum Nihil, the actor could both produce and star in the film.

Depp, star of Pirates of the Caribbean and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, has been following Mr Litvinenko's case closely, Variety reported.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6258725.stm

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Scotland Yard wants to resume Moscow probe into Litvinenko death


Scotland Yard has requested permission from Russia once again to send a team of investigators to Moscow to prove the murder of the former KGB colonel Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko died in a London hospital last November, three weeks after being poisoned by the radioactive isotope polonium-210. From his deathbed, he accused President Putin of having a hand in his death - a charge that the Kremlin refutes.

Yuri Chaika, the Russian Prosecutor-General, said today: 'Literally yesterday, a new international investigative request from Great Britain arrived containing a request seeking permission for a group of British investigators probing the Litvinenko case to come to Moscow,.' Metropolitan Police detectives last travelled to Russia in December, but Tony Halpin, Moscow correspondent of The Times, said that Mr Chaika made clear that UK investigators would not be allowed to return until Russian police also probing the Litvinenko death had been allowed to visit Britain.

In a commentary for Times Online, Halpin said that the exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky and Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen separatist spokesman, who were both friends of Litvinenko, would be top of their list of interviewees.

He said that Mr Chaika had also tied up the investigation into Mr Putin's long campaign against the fallen oil giant Yukos - many of whose former executives live in Britain.

It was revealed last week that Russian police have asked the Home Office for permission to interview more than 100 people. The Home Office has declined comment on the request.

The intricate police manoeuvrings are the latest indication of the diplomatic tensions raised by the Litvinenko case.

Scotland Yard investigators who went to Russia last month were not allowed to question anyone directly, instead sitting in while Russian authorities conducted the interviews. Russia also began its own investigation, seen as a bid to keep control of the case. 'We have established very good, constructive working relations with the British. They came here, we gave them all possible assistance in the course of their investigation on the territory of the Russian Federation,' said Mr Chaika. Litvinenko fell ill after meeting with Dmitry Kovtun, a Russian businessman, Andrei Lugovoy, another former KGB agent, and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, head of a private Russian security firm, at a bar at the Millennium Hotel in London. All three men have denied involvement in the former agent's death.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... tr=Britain

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Police identify man they believe poisoned Russian spy


* January 22, 2007

LONDON: British police have identified the man they believe fatally poisoned a former Russian spy with radioactive polonium-210 in London last year.

The suspected killer was captured on cameras at Heathrow as he flew into Britain to carry out the murder.

Friends of the ex-spy say that the man was a hired killer, sent by the Kremlin, who vanished hours after poisoning Alexander Litvinenko.

He arrived in London on a forged EU passport and reportedly slipped the poison into a cup of tea he made for Litvinenko in a London hotel room. Litvinenko was reportedly able to give vital details of his suspected killer in a bedside interview with detectives just days before he died on November 23 at University College Hospital, London.

Police have decided not to publish pictures of the man, who was seen on CCTV cameras as he flew in from Hamburg on November 1, the day Litvinenko fell ill.

He is described as being tall and powerfully built, in his early thirties, with short, cropped black hair and distinctive Central Asian features.

He reportedly travelled on the same flight as Dimitri Kovtun, a Russian businessman who is being investigated for trafficking the radioactive material used in the poison plot.

Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB agent and friend of Litvinenko, who has worked closely with police on the investigation, said: "This man is believed to have used a Lithuanian or Slovak passport. He did not check into any hotel in London using the name or that passport, and he left the country using another EU passport."

German police are investigating how polonium-210 was found in various locations Mr Kovtun visited in Hamburg. According to police sources, until now it has not been revealed that Litvinenko visited a fourth-floor room at the Millennium Hotel to discuss a business deal. He had gone to the room with Mr Kovtun and another former Russian agent, Andrei Lugovoy.

The three men were joined in the room by the mystery figure, introduced as "Vladislav" and someone who could help Mr Litvinenko win a lucrative contract with a security company.

www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,2 ... 03,00.html

 

[JamesWhitehead]

This case seems to recap. aspects of the Karen Silkwood case, especially the suggestion that the victim may have sacrificed himself.

I recently picked up a DVD of the 1983 film which starred Meryl Streep as the whistle-blower employee at a nuclear plant whose contamination was never properly explained. I enjoyed it, if that's the word, way back - probably late eighties - and plan to see it again tonight. In preparation, I thought I would look up the facts of the case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood

I see that Poliakoff's drama, Nothing Like the Sun, in which a nuclear worker deliberately swallows Plutonium dates from 1977. It was shown again on BBCFour a year ago:

Here

:shock: