Interesting. Can't with to see what the autopsy reveals. I'm glad that this recieved the media attention that it has.
I also look forward to the autopsy. While I kind of instinctively want to feel sorry for anyone who openly opposed the kremlin and was trying to hunt down the killers of the recently assasinated russian journalist (anna something or other, another critic of the kremlin) - I find it hard to. This man was afterall a Lieutenant Colonel in a vicious spy orginisation for many years, he no doubt did lot's of very bad things in that time. Still, it's a fairly telling reminder of what russian groups are capable of. Even if this wasn't Putin himself it serves the purposes of someone with a similar agenda, and therefore benefits Putin. Russian politics can clearly still get extremely dirty.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6180682.stm Polonium 210? Now there's a murder weapon that points at a super-power or three. The conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this. My money's on the CIA.
The Kremlin doesn't do anything any other goverment doesn't. I can't help but thinking that Litvinenko was just the flipside of the same game. What I want to know is what happened to the "three small packages" that were allegedly X-rayed in his gut, one of which looked "as if it had ruptured"...
"Possibly shadows caused by the treatment medication" (BBC News) However, Largely from polonium 210. Smoking kills.
It was certainly readily available a few years ago; Some woman reporter on BBC claimed to have sourced an on-line supply today; showed the page on her phone. She's a better searcher than me, all I get is the lousy t-shirt.
The data: OK, let's look at who Litvinenko was. He became a security agent in the FSB's predecessor, the KGB, after transferring from the military. He rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel (basically, mid-level command). He headed up one of the internal investigations branches that was looking into the corruption and coercion that was going on within the Russian intelligence service. He fell out with President Putin, then head of the FSB, in the late 1990s, after failing to crack down on corruption within the organisation. 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. Complaining of persecution, in 2000 Mr Litvinenko fled to the UK where he sought, and was granted, asylum, and became outspoken among a group of Russian dissidents. He was never a spy as has been claimed, but after settling in a London suburb with a wife and teenage son, he certainly behaved like one on the run: constantly changing his contact details and meeting contacts at busy, public locations. He claimed that once someone had tried to push a pram loaded with petrol bombs through his front door (not quite as sophisticated as polonium poisoning, then). Litvinenko wrote a book in 2002 which he alleged Federal Security Service (FSB) agents in Russia coordinated the 1999 apartment block bombings in the country that killed more than 300 people. The Russian government has always maintained the blasts were the work of Chechen separatists, which 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. In the same year, he was convicted in his absence by a Moscow court of abuse of office and given a three-year suspended sentence. One of his friends is Akhmed Zakayev, a former Chechen commander living under asylum in London. The two men are reported to have lived on the same street. In the past, Russia has asked Britain to stop them making what it calls "slanderous statements" about the Russian regime, and has repeatedly sought their extradition. Litvinenko is thought to have been close to journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead last month in Moscow, and said recently he was investigating her murder. She was carrying out investigations into corruption and it is assumed that Mr Litvinenko would have been privy to those inquiries. It was after being handed "documents relating to the murder of Ms Politkovskaya" that he was taken ill. The analysis: Mainly his friends Berezovsky and Zakayev (who has associations with the terrorist mastermind of the Beslan school siege, incidentally) support his claim that the FSB wanted to kill him. The question is: why bother? After six years living in London, he hasn't made a single revelation of note about the FSB. If he knew or suspected anything sinister or important about Politkovskaya's murder or the FSB's shenanigans, he didn't spill the beans on his death bed, when presumably he would have nothing left to fear. His final statement basically says nothing remarkable. On the contrary, in a number of interviews from his hospital bed he accused a lot and hinted a lot at "evidence", but always refused to be more specific. Now what can I say about the man? He certainly professed strong principles, and liked to be where the action was. He also liked to be the center of attention, perhaps even more so when he was not. He liked the danger and excitement and drama. He liked to matter, to be somebody. No quiet life for him, even when he had a wife and child to consider. Putin, Berezovsky, Zakayev, Politkovskaya: if the players were important, he liked to be part of the drama. The FSB can't have thought of him as more than an annoyance however --they had him in custody, but let him go; they even let him leave the country. They made no attempt at his life for the last six years. As each year passed, he had fewer connections left with his old work colleagues. So why is he suddenly so dangerous now? Then there is the method of assasination. Very graphic, very dramatic. The Russians sure like their poison: from Georgi Markov in 1978 (with the infamous umbrella tip) to Yuri Shchekochikhin, a Russian journalist in 2003, and even a failed attempt on Anna Politkovskaya in 2004. In April 2002 the Russian secret services used a poison in order to liquidate one of the most dangerous Chechen warlords, Omar ibn-Khattab. He died within five minutes after opening a letter said to be written by his mother. It would certainly fit the pattern. But all recent poisonings were very quick and subtle. Polonium seems a bit, well, crude. Unless there was a point to be made, there would have been better, quicker methods. And if one was worried about Litvinenko spilling whatever dangerous knowledge he possessed or was about to find out, you would want it to be quick. You wouldn't want his last solliloqui to become a media event. But he would. For a man slipping into insignificance, becoming a bit-part extra (with no lines!) on the political world stage of moving-and-shaking events around Russia, must have been intolerable. He was losing his connections, his insider knowledge was getting out of date. He had no influence. He wasn't a player anymore. For an army man, sacrificing one's life for the cause would not be an unusual notion. Going out dying a heroic warrior's death, like a martyr. Like the likes of Politkovskaya. Then again... Experts say that whoever poisoned him must really have known their polonium: too little and he would survive; too much and he'd die on the spot. But who says that death was the intended outcome? Perhaps Litvinenko just wanted to be really ill but survive. To put him in the spotlight again. To impress upon the people his importance, and to lend more credibility to what he knew and suspected. He would certainly know what stuff to choose, and how to get hold of it. I may be doing the guy a severe injustice, but I think he drank his own bitter cup.
Interesting - and I suppose the point about him not spilling the beans on his death-bed is a good one... Either way, I don't know enough to disagree or agree with you. As said, interesting.
Interesting - I do hope we find out in due course. You've certainly done a lot of reading on the guys history as well, which is most illuminating (the apparent links to the Chechen guy especially). The point about the slow acting nature of the poison is one I hadn't thought of before either. What if he was part way through an investigation but couldn't be sure of his conclusions yet? Assume there was such an investigation, and he knew something damaging, and was close to gaining the information or source that would prove it.... Spilling all the beans publicly at that stage would surely be counterproductive to the investigation? Surely the British intelligence/security services here would've been able to have a word with him about what he knew, before the end? In which case the authorities must have some idea about whether he really was at risk from the Russians, as he maintained, because of what he knew, or whether he was just a lonely nobody wanting to make a name for himself. It'd certainly take a peculiar type of person to risk killing himself in such a painful and slow way, that and the fact that he had family around him...I mean his father apparently watched him die. Suppose you know more than me about what can drive somewhat to that stage though.
That's some conspiracy theory Not sure I can agree with you, but still, logic's there. A possible explanation. edit RTT: no need to quote the whole text for a general reply
