December 4, 2006
LET US ASSUME FOR A MOMENT...:
British police arrive in Moscow to hunt for spy death clues (Philippe Naughton, 12/04/06, Times of London)
Litvinenko, 43, died three weeks after ingesting a toxic radioactive isotope, polonium-210, which made his hair fall out and ravaged his organs. Results of the post-mortem examination on his body are expected later this week and might help pinpoint the origin of the radioactive substance.He is believed to have received the poison at a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, London. An Italian contact who had lunch with Litvinenko at the restaurant, Mario Scaramella, was also contaminated with polonium, although he has shown no symptoms of radiation poisoning.
In an interview with Italy’s RAI television, Mr Scaramella said that doctors had told him that his body contained five times the dose of polonium-210 that would normally be considered lethal. "So my mood isn’t the best," he told the channel.
Litvinenko's father, Walter, said in an interview published today that his son - who was born an Orthodox Christian but had close links to Islamist rebels in Chechnya - had requested to be buried according to Muslim tradition after converting to Islam on his deathbed.
"He said ’I want to be buried according to Muslim tradition’," Mr Litvinenko told Moscow's Kommersant daily.
"I said, ’Well son, as you wish. We already have one Muslim in our family - my daughter is married to a Muslim. The important thing is to believe in the Almighty. God is one.’"
...that Vladimir Putin was directly responsible for this assassination. How would it differ then from Ehud Olmert ordering a missile attack on someone from the military wing of Hamas or from Islamic Jihad or us hellfiring an al Qaeda meet-up in Waziristan? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 4, 2006 6:19 PM
It would differ in that Litvinenko did not plan or order the deaths of Russian citizens. In fact, it appears his offense against the FSB was to expose their dirty tricks (admittedly a hazardous thing to do). Also, Olmert and Bush are up front about vaporizing terrorists.
Posted by: Jack Sheet at December 4, 2006 7:34 PM...We're not monsters?
Posted by: Just John at December 4, 2006 7:36 PMWho perpetrated Beslan? The Symbionese Liberation Army?
Posted by: oj at December 4, 2006 8:26 PMThere must be a peculiar code with Russian assassinations. It's one thing to kill an opponent using bullets, missiles,bombs, or a knife. Its entirely another matter to cook a man alive from the insides over a three week period. They knew the outcome but I think there was another message in there somewhere. Quite different from Hellfire, missiles, etc.
Posted by: Tom Wall at December 4, 2006 10:02 PMIt's more likely, as AJ Strata has argued, that Litivenko was part of a smuggling ring delivering Polonium 210 to Iran for use as detonators of nuclear bombs. As an assassination method, radiation poisoning is messy; it cannot escape detection, and when the poison is a rare artificial element such as Polonium 210, it can easily be traced to a few sources. The Polonium was apparently on Litivenko's hands, as it appears on light switches in rooms he was in.
Posted by: pj at December 4, 2006 10:02 PMYou use what you have.
Posted by: oj at December 4, 2006 10:17 PMThere must be a peculiar code with Russian assassinations.Solzhenitsyn writes in Gulag Archipelago about the peculiarly Russion love of melodrama, leading many secret-police arrest to be elaborate staged affairs rather than simply presenting the badge and nabbing the suspect. Posted by: Kirk Parker at December 4, 2006 10:27 PM
Putin has a fetish for poison.
Posted by: Macduff at December 4, 2006 11:17 PMMaybe Litvinenko found a good way to smuggle radiologicals past airport security... he ate them.
One small drawback though.
Gives a new dimension to the phrase silent but deadly.
PJ
You can buy Polonium 210 at $71 a pop
h-man - Yes, but the quantity there is tiny, probably micrograms or less, and purchases are regulated and tracked by the U.S. government. Annual world production is about 200 gm per year. The half-life is four months, so that means there's only about 80 gm in the world total.
One of those vendors, United Nuclear, says:
The amount of Polonium-210, as well as any of the isotopes we sell is an 'exempt quantity' amount. These quantities of radioactive material are not hazardous - this is why they are permitted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to be sold to the general public ... [We] do not actually stock them. All isotopes are made to order at an NRC licensed reactor in Oak Ridge Tennessee. When the isotope is made, it is shipped directly to the customer from the reactor ...
The exempt quantity amount of Polonium-210, or any of the radioactive isotopes sold is so small that they are essentially invisible to the human eye. In the case of needle sources, the radioactive material is electroplated on the inside of the eye of a needle. 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.