Dec 08 2006
Zakayev Destroys Case For Putin Assassination Order
Leave it to the bungling Polonium smugglers to shoot off their mouths again and actually make the case against a Putin assassination hit on Litvinenko as they try to make the opposite point:
Akhmed Zakayev, a former Chechen resistance leader now exiled in London, told The Independent: “There wouldn’t have been such a scandal surrounding Litvinenko’s death if polonium had not been found in his body. If he had been killed by any other means  a car accident, a gunshot, anything  it would have been a story for a day. Russia now has to wipe its image clean of polonium.”
Zakayev knows he has much of the gullible liberal media (is there any other kind in the UK?) buying into the assassination = theory even though it has become so ludicrous that it has to ignore all the Polonium trails made prior to the Millenium Hotel Bar so as to try and stay relevant. But this again demonstrates what I have been saying all along – the Litvinenko deathbed claim (which never saw the light of day until he died and it had to be used) was nothing more than a diversionary bit of PR theatre. The smugglers screwed up and contaminated themselves, and needed some other media story to divert attention from themselves. Is it my falt the media sees nothing conflicted in the fact there are three hotels contaminated in what appears to be Polonium shipments coming into London on Oct 16, 25 and 31st? That someone spent 30+ million euros to smuggle maybe 100 times the amount needed to ‘silence’ Litvinenko? And now we have Zakayev, leader of Chechen extremists hell bent on destroying Russia and who just yesterday said the West would reap a ‘dirty bomb’ for their dealings with Putin, saying now Russia must cleanse itself of the Polonium?
Sorry Ahmed – but I am not taking the bait. You and your buddies need to explain why there was Polonium 210 in your car and Berezovsky’s office. You are the one who has Polonium 210 on your person – literally. Someone needs to remind the Independent that it was Berezovsky who initiated the PR campaign when it was learned that Litvinenko had been contaminated by a nuclear material.
“how do they go into an apartment and determine that a source of radiation was there in the past but is no longer there?”
Not sure CP, but I think they mean that it’s still radioactive, but that the original source — the polonium — isn’t there anymore. What I wonder is if this is really a “hot” spot caused by primary exposure, or if it’s more secondary exposure from clothing, etc., that he wore in his meeting at the Millennium Pine Bar.
Do you suppose this means the polonium did not come from Russia but was shipped from whereever via Hamburg where so many jihadists like to live? It’s a short flight from London to Hamburg and vice versa. No trouble at all. All I know is these people really get around.
Mariposa
I would be interested in knowing the last time Kovtun occupied this apartment.
Barbara, could be that, or maybe the opposite — Kovtun brought some back from London and handed it off to somebody in Hamburg, and that somebody’s gone already?
Now I’m confused about the Hamburg story. Check the next thread over, Barbara, and see what you think. There’s another story out that states that an apartment down the block from Kovtun’s is radioactive. Does that mean Kovtun’s apartment isn’t radioactive? Or that two apartments in Hamburg are radioactive? I’m going back to read more carefully…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2495179,00.html
Russian regime is accused of intimidating British interests
Ambassador suffers months of harassment and BBC service in Moscow mysteriously goes off the air after the Litvinenko murder
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2495177,00.html
Spies sent ‘to seize cash from Yukos exiles’
In his last investigation before he was murdered, Alexander Litvinenko claimed to have uncovered a plan by the Russian Federal Security Service to claw back millions of pounds from wealthy Russians who fled to London and other Western capitals.
Actually, I think Akhmed Zakayev simply spoke the truth.
But then of all the theories the Chechen connection is the most ridiculous to me.
And the evidence turning up day by day supports my view.
Again, from the Times article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2495177,00.html
“Most of those on the list already knew the danger they faced: a number of former Yukos officials have been murdered or jailed or have disappeared in recent years.
Stephen Curtis, the British managing director of a company that had been the main shareholder in Yukos, died in a helicopter crash close to his palatial home in Dorset in March 2004. He died a fortnight after he went to Scotland Yard saying that he had received death threats. He told detectives that he feared that a hit team had been sent from Moscow to assassinate him.
Yuri Chaika, the Russian prosecutor-general, who has taken over the investigation into the Litvinenko affair, has been conducting a fresh inquiry in Moscow into the Yukos affair. Official approaches that President Putin has made in the past three years to Whitehall and other Western governments has, however, failed to persaude them to send back a single person on the Kremlin’s wanted list. ”
Well, gee, Yuri, you think that policy of no extradition from Britain to Russia might just have a little something to do with all these Yukos people, including British citizens, ending up dead? I surely do.
Who pointed to polonium-210 as the cause of the poisoning? How could such a guess be made without personal knowledge?
My guess would be that Litvinenko told his doctors it could be polonium-210 in the hopes that the information might help save his life. That would mean that Litvinenko had personal knowledge of the substance and that it was an accidental spilling that he turned into a Putin assassination for his own benefit.
SBD
Absolutely, Clarice.
SBD,
that’s explained very well, at the bottom of p. 1 and top of p. 2, here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2484295_1,00.html
Terror trail uncovered The Guardian (London) July 25, 2001
SECTION: Guardian Foreign Pages, Pg. 12
LENGTH: 177 words
HEADLINE: Terror trail uncovered
BODY:
A lot of uranium was smuggled in the mid-90s and there has been another surge in the past two years:
July 2001 French police find five grams of enriched uranium in the possession of a French swindler in Paris
A man is arrested in Germany for allegedly stealing contaminated plutonium
January-March 2001 20 cases of illegal trafficking in radioactive materials, with thefts in Germany, Romania, South Africa and Mexico
April 2000 Detectives in Colombia seize pounds 1m-worth of enriched uranium from an animal feed salesman
920 grams of enriched uranium found in Georgia
July 1995-April 2000 13 seizures in western Europe and 41 along southern routes through Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Middle East
May 1991-June 1995 53 seizures in western Europe and 11 along the southern routes
1994 Colombian arrested in Frankfurt travelling from Moscow with plutonium in his suitcase. Turned out to be a sting by German intelligence
Sources including the World Today, published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs
LOAD-DATE: July 25, 2001
SBD
This is probably why Germany is the center of the proliferation. According to this story, not only were the smugglers acquitted, but they were paid for being detained as well. The story was written in all caps exactly as posted below.
GERMAN COURT ACQUITS POLES SUSPECTED OF NUCLEAR MATERIALS TRADING PAP News Wire June 29, 1993
SECTION: NEWS
LENGTH: 240 words
HEADLINE: GERMAN COURT ACQUITS POLES SUSPECTED OF NUCLEAR MATERIALS TRADING
BODY:
BONN, BOCHUM, JUNE 29: THREE POLES SUSPECTED OF ILLEGAL TRAFFICKING IN RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS WERE ACQUITTED BY A COURT IN BOCHUM ON TUESDAY.
KRZYSZTOF CHMIST, JAROSLAW MASLISZ AND ZBIGNIEW FIUTKOWSKI WILL RECEIVE COMPENSATION FOR BEING UNLAWFULLY ARRESTED.
THEY WERE DETAINED LAST OCTOBER IN FRANKFURT AM MAIN AND CHARGED WITH THE POSSESSION OF SMALL QUANTITIES OF STRONTIUM AND CAESIUM. THE COURT FOUND IT WAS NOT A CRIME TO POSSESS THOROUGHLY
PACKED ISOTOPES WHICH WERE NOT WASTE MATERIALS. THEY COULD BE APPLIED FOR MEDICAL PURPOSES OR IN MEASURING EQUIPMENT. THEREFORE, THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION LAW WAS NOT BROKEN AND
THEY WERE ACQUITTED.
ZBIGNIEW FIUTKOWSKI DID ACTUALLY NEGOTATE WITH AN UNDERCOVER AGENT BUT THE DEGREE OF ENRICHMENT OF THE TRADED URANIUM WAS NOT DEFINED AT THE TIME OF ARREST. THIS PROVED TO BE OF KEY IMPORTANCE FOR THE COURT BECAUSE ONLY URANIUM 235 CAN BE USED IN FOR THE PRODUCTION OF A NUCLEAR BOMB. THEREFORE, THE COURT FOUND THAT THE DEFENDANT DID NOT KNOW WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT.
LOAD-DATE: June 29, 1993
SBD
Russian radio broadcast from 1992 discussing Nuclear Proliferation from the former Soviet Union and threats from Chechnya.
Bold Emphasis Mine
October 30, 1992, Friday
The USSR; GENERAL AND WESTERN RELATIONS; SU/1525/A1/ 1;
LENGTH: 509 words
RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL RUSSIA NO PANDORA’S BOX OF NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION
SOURCE: (b) Mayak radio, Moscow 1330 gmt 28 Oct 92
Excerpts from report by Anatoliy Federov
(summary need for economic disincentives to discourage states wishing to build nuclear weapons; Chechen leader’s threat to blow up nuclear installations in Chechnia ”pretentious”, though the threat of ”terrorist” sabotage exists throughout the world)
The Foreign Intelligence Service held a briefing for Russian and foreign journalists at the press centre of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation today [28th October] . Here is our corespondent Anatoliy Fedorov.
[Fedorov] The audience was addressed by Gennadiy Yevstafyev, the head of the recently-created directorate for arms control and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and Tatyana Samolis, the press secretary of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.
The consequences of the end of the cold war confrontation were unexpected in the sense that problems that had long been kept in the background as far as the world community was concerned came to the surface. And they have suddenly started to cause a lot of trouble. One of them is the issue of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and means of delivery. The Foreign Intelligence Service had been involved in this previously too, but now there’s been a change of political climate.
[Yevstafyev] The problem,of course,is not just a military-political or moral and ethical one. In many respects it is an economic problem. So one of the important tasks is the creation of strong incentives to ensure that those who want to make these weapons are encouraged to try not to do so. This is a very difficult matter. But it does not seem to be hopeless. If we look through the prism of Russian interests, the emergence of new states possessing weapons of mass destruction is not in our interests, particularly on the perimeter of our borders. In our new approach we, of course, orient ourselves towards a full and precise implementation of the international obligations that Russia has assumed. This is something we have not been doing sometimes. Let’s be frank. We have sometimes opted for a rather loose interpretations of a whole series of demands.
[Unidentified correspondent] How do you react to the fact that Russia and the other CIS countries are getting the distinct reputation of a Pandora’s box from which minds, fissile material and technologies are escaping to such an extent that people are saying that some sort of control needs to be put on Russia in this regard?
[Yevstafyev] As far as minds are concerned, we have carried out checks of the names lasting many weeks. The reports have never been confirmed. [omitted numbers of scientists cited in the above ITAR-TASS report] [Fedorov] How serious was the statement by General Dudayev, the Chechen leader, that he intended to blow up certain nuclear power stations and that they have nuclear weapons?
[Yevstafyev] I think this is a very pretentious statement. As regards the possibility of terrorism with regard to nuclear installations, yes, this problem does exist in the world.
SBD
SOme years ago Ted Turner gave money to set up NTRI which former Senator Nunn heads. It was designed to get a handle on nuclear proliferation. Among other things it is to buy up nuclear material from Russia to keep it from falling into the wrong hands and to help the Russians develop security systems.
That works if you assume the state is not 100% corrupt and there is an actual interest in keeping track of things, which there obviously is not.
**NTI***
Here’s the NTI website. http://www.nti.org/