Posted on 02/13/2007 6:16:39 AM PST by RichardMoore
As Alexander Litvinenko lay dying under tight police protection at London's University College hospital, he pointed an accusing finger at the man he believed responsible for ordering his assassination: Russian President Vladimir Putin. The dying man had good cause for suspecting Putin. Abundant evidence, including a radioactive trail of polonium-210, the substance used to poison him, leads right back to Putin's operatives in Moscow. In addition, the Kremlin's heavy-handed tactics to twart efforts of British police detectives sent to Russia to investigate the poisoning do little for the credibility of Putin's protestations of innocence and his pledges to do everything possible to help solve the crime.
Mr. Litvinenko had become ill on November 1, after a meeting at London's Mayfair Millennium Hotel with three Russian "businessmen": Andrei Lugovoi, Dmitry Kovtun, and Vyacheslav Sokolenko. Lugovoi acknowledges that he is a former agent of the FSB, the renamed KGB. Litvinenko was sure that he had been poisoned later that evening, when he was seized with violent vomiting. After three weeks of agonizing deterioration, in which a fit 43-year-old Litvinenko lost his hair and shrunk to a shell of his former self, he died on November 23.
Even as his life was ebbing away, Alexander and his wife, Marina, had been hoping for a recovery."I did not lose hope."she told the Sunday Times of London. "He was a very handsome man, but each day for him was like 10 years, he became older in how he looked." Mrs. Litvinenko added: "Even until the last day, and the day before when he became unconscious, I thought that he would be OK. we were both completely sure he would recover. We had been talking about bone-marrow transplants and looking to the future."
The poison, initially thought to be thallium, turned out to be polonium-210, which Dr. Andrea Sella, lecturer in chemistry at University College London, told reporters was "one of the rarest substances on the planet" and few could obtain it. "This is not some random killing." Dr. Sella said. "This is not a tool chosen by a group of amateurs. These people had some serious resources behind them."
Polonium-210 leaves a trail and, as many news stories have noted, that trail has turned up wherever Lugovoi and Kovtun went in London, Germany, and Russia: a hotel restaurant, airplanes,an apartment, a soccer stadium. One of the most important polonium traces is on a passport photo of Kovtun, which he left at the Hamburg City Hall in Germany, where he applied for a residency permit two days before meeting with Litvinenko.
When British police detectives from Scotland Yard went to interview a number of witnesses and suspects, including the three men who had met with Litvinenko, they were told that two of the main objects of interest, Lugovoi and Kovtun, were in hospital quarantine for radiation poisoning. The detectives were also informed by Russia's chief prosecutor Yurt Chaika, that, in the words of the Reuters report, they would be "virtually relegated to the role of observers," as Russian police carried out the interviews. Mr. Chaika, a Putin flunky, further made it clear that no suspects would be extradited to England. He has kept the British detectives on a very short leash.
Spokesmen for Putin have denounced susicions of Putin's inolvement as "absurd" and part of a frame-up and conspiracy to discredit Putin and Russia at home and abroad. As to be expected, the Russian press, reflecting Putin's control, points the accusing finger at Putin's enemies, most frequently citing Boris Berezovsky, a former Putin ally now in exile in London, as the likely culprit. Not surprisingly, many journalists in the West have picked up and parroted this theme as well.
However, in addition to considerable evidence tying Putin to the murder through his secret-service minions, it is clear that he--not Berezovsky-- qualifies as the top candidate possessing the classical criteria for a crime suspect: motive, opportunity, and means.
WHAT LITVINENKO KNEW
Mr. Litvinenko, and ex-agent of the Soviet KGB(and it's successor, the Russian FSB), was a fierce critic of Putin even before fleeing to Britain with his family in 2000. He had first come to the attention of the Western media in 1998 while still a lieutenant-colonel in the FSB, creating a stir with his public revelation that he had been ordered to assassinate Berezovsky, one of Russia's richest new oligarchs. It was an order he refused to carry out. The head of the FSB at the time: Vladimir Putin.
After obtaining asylum in England, Mr. Litvinenko became an even bigger thorn in Putin's side, His powerful 2002 book, BLowing UP Russia:Terror From Within, with Yuri Felshtinsky, presents convincing evidence which supports the charges of investigative journalists and Russian analysts that the infamous series of apartment bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk in 1999 were provocations by Putin's FSB, not the work of Chechen terroists. The September 1999 bombings killed over 300 people and wounded hundreds of others. Putin, who was named prime minister under Boris Yetsin just three weeks before the bombings began, expertly played up the incidents to stir up public outrage in favor of retaliation against Chechnya. Yetsin resigned under mysterious circumstances on December 31,1999, naming Putin to suceed him as actin president. Putin then surprised other presidential candidates and gave himself an advantage by holding the presidential election in March 2000, rather than in the fall, as previously scheduled. Playing up his popular hard-line-against-terrorism image, Putin easily rode to victory.
Does FR allow New American stuff to be posted here?
bttt
(Ras)Putin is a very dangerous man.
I agree. But he ain't as smart as he thinks he is.
The truth will set you free. If we are actually fighting the Russians in this "war on terror," then I think it sheds a whole new light on support for the war in Iraq. I realize that The New American does not support the war but the obvious conclusion here is that we have much more at stake in Iraq than the public is aware of. So I think that this is important to know, no matter where it comes from.
I was just asking if FR allowed it, not the it does not have some legit points. The Birchers can be right sometimes. LOL
I forgot to mention that Mr.Prodi, the current Prime Minister of Italy, was the President of the European Commission from Sept. 1999 through Nov 2004, one of the most critical periods of the European Union, which included the launching of the euro currency, expansion of the EU to include former communist countries, and the drafting of the EU constitution.
Well, I don't know what is censored here other than abusive language. I do think that we "conservatives" should stop talking in circles and wake up.
Who is talking in circles? Does Russia do some shady things? Yep. Is Russia an ally? No. Does every conservative understand this? Yes.
Same can be said for China.
Putin is part of a larger picture which involves Lenin's plan to fool the West into thinking that the Soviets have gone capitalist. When in fact they are just out to get our money, which they did, and then tighten the screw again, which they are now. Putin has nationalized 75% of the businesses in Russia. LUKoil is now in our country and is run by an FSB/KGB crony of Putin's. Don't buy gas there.
Putin can try as he might, but the genie is out of the bottle. There is no going back to being the USSR.
Well, that sounds strong but Mr Putin is following Gorbachev's lead from his 1986 book, Perestroika, in which Gorby quoted Lenin saying that the Soviets should pretend to be capitalists in order to get some needed money from the "Main Adversary"( that being the USA). So whether we like it or not, whether is fits our emotional attachment to Reagan's defeat of the Evil Empire, we should face the fact that they, the communists, have a strategy that has outsmarted us.
Gorbachev tried. They lost all of their former slave colonies (republics)in the process, or did you forget about that. And they ai'nt going back. They lost all influence in eastern Europe as well. Former iron curtain countries such as Pland , the Chech Republic, and Hungary are doing quite nicely as US allies now. People can migrate to and from Russia now. They will not be defeating anybody anytime soon.
They never mention that Litvinenko had converted to Islam, nor that the family fought hard to get him a traditional Islamic funeral. I think it is imperative to include that information and to follow the trace it leaves as well. Otherwise he ends up looking like a freedom-fighting whistle-blower. But I think there is more.
Interesting.
Thanks for posting.
Counterpoint here...
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2006/11/litvinenko_conv.html
You are missing the longer range picture here. The EU is firmly socialist and has been dubbed "Soviet Europe" by none other that Gorbachev. And we are currently fighting Russia when we take on al-Qaeda. Russia is behind 9-11!
Oh yes, and we the USA paid them ten of billions of dollars for that ransom of eastern Europe.
Islam, while it is as a problem, is really not the issue here, in light of this information about Russia backing al-Qaeda. Thes are not vague connections we are talking about here. Russia is our enemy. And we are fighting their agents abroad and at home.
No, Russia was not responsible for 911. Its birch paranoia. And Russia wasn't responsible for staging the Beslan massacre, it really happened. Russia is now surrounded by former republics and sattelite states that have no intention of being controlled again. Russia can't find its ass with both hands.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.