Don't piss off the Russians
A break from the usual personal posts to share with you the most horribly cruel murder ever perpetrated.The radioactive spy
· Discovery of polonium 210 sparks public health scare
· Foreign Office fears for British-Russian relations
Ian Cobain and Jeevan Vasagar
Saturday November 25, 2006
The Guardian
The mysterious death of a former Russian spy living in exile in London turned into an unprecedented public health scare yesterday when it emerged that he had been deliberately poisoned by a major dose of radioactive material.
Further traces of the substance were found at a sushi restaurant, at a central London hotel where Alexander Litvinenko met a number of people before falling ill, and at his home in the city.
He was killed by polonium 210, a rare radioactive isotope which is so toxic that there may never be a postmortem examination of Mr Litvinenko's body, for fear of causing further deaths.
Article continues
Police and security sources said they had never encountered such an extraordinary death. "Nothing like this has ever happened before," said one Whitehall source. "It is unprecedented, we are in uncharted territory." One priority last night was to establish who has access to polonium 210 anywhere in the world.
Government ministers meanwhile, are said to be "dreading" the possible repercussions of a public inquest into Mr Litvinenko's death, at which they expect his associates to make highly damning accusations against the Russian government.
Last night health officials were contacting up to 100 people, including doctors, nurses, hospital staff and relatives, who came into contact with the former spy during his three weeks of treatment at two London hospitals, so that each can be screened for signs of contamination.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) stressed that the risk to hospital staff was extremely low, as alpha radiation from the former agent's body would need to be breathed in, swallowed, or enter an open wound before causing harm. Normal hospital practices should have prevented this. Nor would anybody be at risk just because they had been close to Mr Litvinenko.
However, the agency said it could not assess the level of risk to the public who had visited locations which had been contaminated with the substance. Professor Roger Cox, director of the HPA's centre for radiological, chemical and environmental hazards, said there was insufficient information to make such an assessment. Last night police were refusing to say how much of the substance was found at the hotel and restaurant, or at Mr Litvinenko's house in Muswell Hill, north London.
Radiation from the polonium was first detected in Mr Litvinenko's urine hours before he died on Thursday night. There is no antidote to the substance, however, and the HPA said that such a large dose would always kill once ingested. Scientists are now trying to use computer models, based on analysis of Mr Litvinenko's urine, and the apparent damage to his organs over the last three weeks, to work out when he may have been poisoned.
While Scotland Yard say they are treating his death as suspicious, they are not describing their investigation as a murder inquiry. One possibility being considered is that Mr Litvinenko deliberately poisoned himself.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Yard's Counter Terrorism Command, which is conducting the investigation, said: "We continue to carry out a thorough investigation. We will trace possible witnesses, examine Mr Litvinenko's movements at relevant times, including when he first became ill, and identify people he met. There will also be an extensive examination of CCTV footage."
Enemies of the Russian president Vladimir Putin immediately pointed the finger of blame at the Russian leader, insisting the poisoning bore all the hallmarks of an assassination by Mr Litvinenko's former colleagues from the FSB, a successor to the KGB.
Mr Litvinenko fled to Britain six years ago after revealing an alleged a plot to murder Boris Berezovsky, a multi-millionaire businessman also in exile in the UK.
On November 1, he met Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic, at a sushi restaurant. Mr Scaramella showed him two emails, seen by the Guardian, which warned "Russian intelligence officers speak more and more about necessity to use force" against critics of Russia including Mr Berezovsky and Mr Litvinenko.
Yesterday Mr Litvinenko's associates, many of them employees of Mr Berezovsky, produced a statement which they said was made by Mr Litvinenko last Tuesday, in which the former agent blamed Mr Putin for his impending death.
"The howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life," he is said to have declared. "May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people."
The Russian president sought to brush aside such claims yesterday, telling a press conference: "There is no ground for speculation of this kind. A death of a man is always a tragedy and I deplore this and send my condolences to the family."
Far from seizing upon Mr Litvinenko's death as an opportunity to criticise the Kremlin, however, there was deep concern in Whitehall that the affair could damage relations between the two countries, despite the efforts of both governments to prevent that happening.
In particular, senior Foreign Office officials are known to be anxious that anti-Putin associates of the former spy will see the inquest into his death as an opportunity to make embarrassing allegations about the Russian government.
posted by Unknown @ 8:45 PM
4 comments
