SCIENCE
Polonium Ploy (Part 1 of 2)
By Dr Rizwana Rahim
Chicago, IL
What
was almost never a topic of dinner-table conversation
has now become one. And, it involves one particular
dinner involving a group of people who resurrected
the Cold War days of international intrigue -- people
who could have walked out of the shady pages of
a cloak-and-dagger book.
Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB colonel, was
one such person. In the late 90’s, Litvinenko
had run into problems with FSB (Federal Security
Bureau Russia , the KGB successor), for which he
was tried, convicted and later conditionally released.
Then, in 2001, he escaped to Britain (via Turkey),
with the help of a Russia billionaire émigré`,
Boris Berezovsky, a long-time Kremlin foe and another
escapee, who has been living in London, a person
Litvinenko had become friends with in Russia, and
for whom he was working since coming to London.
Litvinenko was granted asylum in Britain. He has
also recently received British citizenship. On November
1-2, after meeting a group of people over meal and
drinks, he suddenly fell ill, and died three weeks
later (on 23 November 2006; age 44), in London.
All forensic evidence points to radiation poisoning,
possibly by eating or drinking something laced with
Polonium (Po)-210, a highly radioactive isotope
of Po (that ruled out radioactive Thallium, the
initially suspected toxic substance involved).
Litvinenko had been investigating the murder in
Moscow of an internationally-recognized Russian
investigative journalist, Anna Politkovkaya, a vocal
critic of Russian policy in Chechnya , and of Putin
himself. She, 48, born actually in New York to parents
in Soviet diplomatic core, and a mother of two,
was shot to death on an early October evening in
the elevator of her Moscow apartment building by
a “mysterious thin man with a black baseball
hat,” leaving a Makarov pistol and a few spent
shells by her side, “the signature,”
according to the New York Times, “of a contract
killing.” That was just days before she had
planned to publish an expose` on Chechen Prime Minister.
Litvinenko’s intriguing life and his recent
activities and contacts have been extensively covered
in the press, and Scotland Yard and other investigative
agencies have been connecting dots to establish
a trail back to Moscow . Just a few relevant details
here:
At a journalist panel meeting in London (FrontLine
Club), investigating Anna Politkovkaya’s death,
which Litivinenko attended, he announced he knew
Putin did it. Litivinenko has been making trouble
for Putin since late 90s when Putin headed KGB.
Julia Svetlichnaja, a Russian academic Litvinenko
knew, told The Observer (London) that he was short
of money, and was threatening (unless paid his demand)
to make public some KGB files he had on Russian
oligarchs (a blackmail effort).
The day Litvinenko fell ill (November 1), he had
two meetings, one at a Central London shushi bar,
Itsu, with Mario Scaramella, an Italian lawyer who
wanted to give him some document that had death
threats against those (including Scaramella and
Livinenko) who were investigating Anna’s death;
there, Litvinenko ate but Scaramello had nothing.
From Itsu, Litvinenko walked over to the Pine bar,
stopping on his way by Berezovsky’s office
in Mayfair to show him Scaramella’s document.
Then, at the Pine Bar in the Millennium Hotel near
the US embassy, he met Andrei Lugovoi, his former
KGB friend who had moved into private security business,
and Lugovoi’s childhood friend and business
partner, Dmitri Kovtun, a former Soviet army officer
who had lived in Germany for several years. Litvinenko
had met Lugovoi before (Oct 16-17 and Oct 26) at
other places, but Litvinenko was meeting Kotvun
at the Pine Bar for the first time. Lugovoi who
left for Russia on Oct 26, returned to London Oct
31 with a group of Russians to see a soccer match
Nov 1, between Russian and London teams.
The nature of business at the Pine bar is unclear,
but after the meeting Lugovoi and Kotvun went to
the Soccer. Litvinenko had tea, and went home to
Muswell Hill in North London. That evening he fell
ill, and called his friend and neighbor, Akhmed
Zakayev, Foreign Minister of Chenchnya-in-exile,
also on FSB’s hit list. After three days of
severe stomach pain, he was taken to a North London
Hospital and as his condition worsened in the next
two weeks, he was moved to the University College
Hospital in Central London , where despite extensive
treatment, he died on Nov 23. After autopsy, he
was buried in a sealed, leak-proof coffin, in Highgate
Cemetery, within a few yards of the graves of such
diverse notables as Karl Marx, father of communism,
and George Eliot, the novelist.
Scotland suspects that Litvinenko was poisoned with
Po-210 in Pine Bar, where the seven bar employees
have also tested positive. UK Home Secretary John
Reid announced (on Nov 30) that traces of radioactivity
had been discovered in 12 London locations, as well
as two British Airways planes.
Apart from his wife, Marina, those Litvinenko met
have all tested positive for Po-210. Though Scaramello
was later cleared as a suspect, Lugovoi and Kovtun,
now being treated in Moscow hospitals for radiation
poising, are under investigation. By the elimination
process, the focus has turned to Kovtun, who flew
into London from Hamburg (Germany ) where he visited
his ex-wife’s apartment and her mother’s
place in the suburbs. Traces of Po-210 were found
in both places, the two cars he used in Hamburg
, and the offices he visited; his ex-wife, her partner,
her two children and mother have tested positive.
German investigators now suspect he may have brought
and transferred radioactivity there. Traces were
also found in the British Embassy, Moscow, which
Lugovoi had visited earlier, in a security firm
(near the Millennium Hotel) that Litvinenko and
Lugovoi had visited on an earlier trip to London
(Oct 16), and at Sheraton ParkLane Hotel where they
had met.
However, the plot now thickens, and some new wrinkles:
Both Lugovoi and Kovtun, now reportedly also under
treatment for radiation poisoning think of themselves
as victims (not suspects/perpetrators). Lugovoi
says that he and Litvinenko may have been poisoned
on October 16 when both first met and visited a
security firm where Po-210 traces have been found
later; this firm, Lugovoi did not visit on Nov 1,
when the poisoning is widely believed to have occurred.
Kovtun says he was poisoned when he met the other
two in London . However, Hamburg police report that
the BMW which picked up Kotvun on October 28 when
he flew in from Moscow also had traces of Po-210
on the passenger-side, suggesting that Kotvun may
already have had Po-210 before coming to Hamburg
, but not clear how. Another ex-KGB person who heads
a security firm, Vyacheslav Sokolenko, denies he
was ‘the third man’ at the Nov 1 meeting,
but admits to having traveled with Lugovoi to London,
stayed at the Millennium Hotel and gone to see the
soccer match.
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