| Issue #41, January 19, 2007 |
Poison
A Cast of Characters That Includes 32 Russians, a Scot and a Jew
By Dan Rattiner
Who poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? The facts are clear. On November 1, Litvinenko had lunch with Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun at the Millennium Mayflower Hotel in London. All three got sick from what later turned out to be polonium-210 poison. Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who was a critic of Vladimir Putin, died three weeks later. Lugovoi, another former KGB agent who is now a businessman, remains hospitalized. And Kovtun, still another former KGB agent turned businessman, also was hospitalized. Both have hired a lawyer, Andrei Romashov. Another businessman, Vyacheslav Sokolenko, who was not a KGB agent, traveled from Moscow to London with Kovtun and Lugovoi, but didn’t attend the luncheon. He had gone to Moscow to watch a soccer match with Lovtun and Lugovoi, between Moscow CSKA and Arsenal, the British soccer team that had recently been bought by a group of Russians.
This poisoning bears a startling resemblance to three other apparent poisonings in recent times in Russia. Yuri Shchekochikhin, a former member of the Russian parliament, died of what doctors called “allergic shock” in Moscow in July 2003. But Vyacheslav Izmailov, a reporter and columnist at the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, as well as the researchers at the London lab who found abnormal levels of thallium in a skin sample from the body, believe he was poisoned. Viktor Yushchenko, while running for President of Ukraine, was poisoned and hospitalized from having drunk something laced with Dioxin in September 2004. He recovered. And Yegor T. Gaidar, the former Russian prime minister, collapsed while having breakfast in Ireland just this past December. He recovered, but doctors say he was poisoned.
There have also been other recent assassinations in Moscow. Paul Klebnikov, a celebrated American editor, was shot and killed by assassins on the streets of Moscow July 9, 2004. And Anna Politkovekaya, a prominent writer, was killed by a gunman in a Moscow elevator in October 2006.
After Politkovekaya was killed, a nationalist group published a list of 89 other government critics who should be “executed.” First on the list was Svetlana Gannushkina, a refugee rights activist. Other rights activists on the list were commentator Yevgeniya Albats and veteran activist Sergei Kovalyov. Incidentally, Politkovekaya survived a poisoning in 2003.
“It is not at all easy to get hold of polonium-210,” said Boris Zhukov, head of the radioisotope lab of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Nuclear Research Institute, “and absolutely impossible outside state control, at least in Russia.”
“We are talking about death squads here, like they have in South America,” said Aleksei Venediktov, director of Ekho Moskvy, a radio station in Moscow and a former KGB special units expert.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a deputy in Russia’s Duma said “murders like Litvinenko’s are not to just get rid of individuals, but to leave a message that perhaps ‘you are next.’”
Among those who say he received this subliminal message is Alex Konanykhin, a former Russian banker who today runs a computer company in Atlanta. His autobiography entitled Defiance, was just published.
“But I will continue to speak out,” he said.
Both British and Russian police departments are investigating the poisoning of Litvinenko. But Yuri K. Chaika, the Russian Prosecutor General, says that “all investigations will be conducted by Russian detectives.”
So far, a lot has been determined. Radioactive substances were found in a glass that Litvinenko drank from at the Millennium. Six waiters in the restaurant tested positive for radioactive substances. More radioactive material tested positive at Litvinenko’s home at Muswell Hill in London, at Emirates Stadium nearby, where Kovtun and Lugovoi and Sokolovski watched the Arsenal soccer match that evening, and at the London offices of Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky. Silverware tested positive at the Itsu sushi bar, where snacks were had after the lunch at the Mayflower. Also on a couch in an apartment in Hamburg, Germany owned by the ex-wife of Dmitry Kovtun, where he slept on October 25, before flying to London. Also, on the passenger seat of a car that picked Kovtun up at the Hamburg airport, on a document Kovtun brought to immigration in Hamburg, and at the home of Kovtun’s ex-mother-in-law just outside Hamburg. Several British Airways jets were also found to have traces of radiation. But according to Aeroflot’s deputy chief spokesman at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, no Aeroflot jets tested positive. However, traces of polonium-210 were found in Moscow at the British Embassy.
Marina Litvinenko, the widow of Alexander Litvinenko said, according to Vladimir Isachenkov of the AP, “In Russia it doesn’t matter how many people are killed.”
The Russian Police are interested in interviewing billionaire Boris Berezovsky, who was a friend of Litvinenko. They also want to interview Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen separatist who was Litvinenko’s closest friend and who, along with Berezovsky, attended his funeral.
Litvinenko was buried in a lead-lined coffin designed to prevent radiation from going in or out in a London cemetery. Vladimir Bukovsky, another friend of Litvinenko (but not Berezovsky) said, “On his deathbed, he converted to Islam and asked to be buried when the war is over in Chechen soil. He was a fierce defender of Chechnya.”
Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, the head of Britain’s Muslim parliament, said a special passage from the Koran was read by the imam for Litvinenko at London’s Regent’s Park Mosque on the day of the funeral.
Russian prosecutor General Yuri Chaika is conducting the investigation for the Russian police.
Sian MacLeod, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Britain, is overseeing the investigation for Scotland Yard.
In recent days, Alex Goldfarb, a spokesperson for the family, said that Russian authorities are trying obstruct the British investigation. He also said that Lugovoi must be considered the #1 suspect.
I hope this explains everything.
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