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.

38 responses so far

38 Responses to “Zakayev Destroys Case For Putin Assassination Order”

  1. crosspatch says:

    WOW. Check this out about the apartment in Hamburg:

    “There are indications that there has been a source of radiation there, but no source of radiation has been found,” said Ulrike Sweden, a spokeswoman for Hamburg police.

    Kovtun, one of two Russians who met Litvinenko at London’s Millennium Hotel, is reportedly being treated in Moscow, also for radiation poisoning.

    German police said they began checking the apartment late Friday after media reports that Kovtun had flown to London from Hamburg. Sweden said it was unclear if Kovtun had returned to the German city after meeting Litvinenko.

    She said it was possible that either a person or an object could have been the source of radiation in the apartment in Hamburg’s Altona district.

    Now tell me … how do they go into an apartment and determine that a source of radiation was there in the past but is no longer there? Was there something left behind, such as a radiation meter or protective gear? If so it sure looks even more like smuggling to me.

  2. crosspatch says:

    Good article

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,1968211,00.html

    The names of these three men came up late in the affair: as Mr Litvinenko lay dying in University College Hospital he referred to his meeting with them in the bar of the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, the day he fell ill. Mr Lugovoi says he met Mr Litvinenko 12 or 13 times this year in London.

  3. lostinthedrift says:

    One possibility is to observe biological material in the apartment. They would show microscopically detectable damage.

  4. Lizarde1 says:

    The person could be the thing that was the source no? The radiation could remain after the person or thing left – I don’t know how you could know the difference – maybe by amount in one location with no other trail around the place.

  5. crosspatch says:

    Mr Lugovoi ended his status as an official employee of the state in 1997, when he became head of security for ORT, the television station owned by Mr Berezovsky, at the time a prominent supporter of Mr Yeltsin and ally of Vladimir Putin.

    For the next three years, Mr Lugovoi became a vital part of Mr Berezovsky’s empire, recruiting to his security operation former KGB colleagues such as Vyacheslav Sokolenko, who was also among those who travelled to London.

    When Mr Berezovsky suddenly fell out of favour and fled to Britain in 2000, Mr Lugovoi was caught in the backlash. In 2002, he was jailed for 14 months on charges related to unproven fraud allegations against his former employer.

    The perception that Mr Lugovoi has “done time” for Mr Berezovsky has been highlighted as one reason why his involvement in the murder of Mr Litvinenko, a close ally of the oligarch, is unlikely.

    But the Yard is understood to be looking closely at the theory that Mr Lugovoi, whether with his knowledge or not, was used as a cover by Mr Litvinenko’s assassins.

    The two men met 13 times in London this year to discuss various business ventures and swap intelligence, including at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair on 1 November, the date when Mr Litvinenko fell ill.

    The traces of polonium-210 found in Mr Lugovoi and at various locations such as Arsenal’s Emirates stadium, where Mr Lugovoi and his partner, Dmitry Kovtun, watched a match with CSKA Moscow on 1 November, could emanate from contact with Mr Litvinenko on that day.

    But there is also evidence the polonium was in London for at least a week before 1 November and could have been brought into Britain by a member of Mr Lugovoi’s party on a previous trip. A British Airways flight and five rooms in a hotel, the Sheraton Park Lane, used by Mr Lugovoi and his party on 25 October have tested positive for polonium-210.

    Mr Lugovoi has said: “Someone is trying to set me up.”

    http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2060004.ece

    I don’t see Lugovoi being a state assassin. I do see him being Boris’ hit man if they needed to get rid of Litvinenko in order to provide a cover for the polonium.

  6. crosspatch says:

    “The person could be the thing that was the source no? The radiation could remain after the person or thing left -”

    No, they didn’t find any radiation only evidence that there had been radiation. This would be ionization of a table top or something. Also radiation doesn’t remain. Once the source of it is removed, the radiation is removed. An alpha particle turns into a helium atom the moment it strikes something and I doubt the apartment is helium tight.

  7. crosspatch says:

    Whatever, I am thousands of miles away making up scenarios from bad newspaper reporting.

    Scotland Yard will probably have more information out next week.

  8. Lizarde1 says:

    CP dumb question – is what they found in the Hamburg apartment the same thing they found in Room 441 of the Millenium (evidence that radiation had been there?) I don’t get it yet sorry> if the radiation doesn’t remain then why do areas have to be cleaned? REally dumb here sorry

  9. lostinthedrift says:

    Lizard1, let’s say they found some material suggesting that Po-210 had been handled in the apartment. Such as some storage facility or something along those lines, there are probably other ways, but one way of checking if there has been an alpha-emitting source around would be to check the biological material for microscopic signs of abnormal DNA damage. ANY relatively fresh biological material.

  10. crosspatch says:

    There are other ways. Alpha rays will physically pit plastic, darken glass and make it brittle, and cause physical changes in many different kinds of materials.

  11. Lizarde1 says:

    Now this is the kind of enterprising reporter I like – he is not sitting behind a desk reading blogs and typing up stories:
    London police detained Kommersant correspondent Musa Muradov on Friday when he was trying to examine the place of the poisoning of former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko. The police officers stopped him at Room 441 in the Millennium hotel in Mayfair where Scotland Yard thought the poison for the political émigré had been prepared. Russian businessman Andrey Lugovoi, a witness of the poisoning, stayed in this room in early November.

  12. Lizarde1 says:

    so that is what they were looking for at the millenium, on the airlines etc. – pitting of plastic etc?

  13. lostinthedrift says:

    CP, yes, that would mean that the apartment was a long-term storage place. By looking at biological material it should be possible to determine even short term presence of radioactive material.

  14. Lizarde1 says:

    this is new: they are (as they should) checking the water supply:
    The HPA has also spoken to Thames Water about the possibility of the local water supply being contaminated by water from the dishwasher.

    No contamination has been detected so far, but water supplies are still being tested. More than 200 customers who visited the hotel bar that day are also to be screene

  15. Lizarde1 says:

    here’s more about Hamburg – physicists etc please interpret:
    The first measurements in the first floor of the apartment brought no results, DPA writes, referring to a police spokeswoman. About 8:15 p.m. three multivans of the Federal Office for X-Ray Protection showed up at an Erzberger Street 4-storey building in the centre of Altona,
    Die Welt has got to know that a group of one hundred policemen have encircled and is guarding the whole area around Erzberger Street. Federal Criminal Police Office with specialists built up decontamination mats.

  16. Lizarde1 says:

    ate my post: more about Hamburg part 1:
    Die Welt has got to know that a group of one hundred policemen have encircled and is guarding the whole area around Erzberger Street. Federal Criminal Police Office with specialists built up decontamination mats.

  17. Lizarde1 says:

    this is not liking cut and paste right now so I will type: 100 police surrounding the area of Altoona in Hamburg and decontamination experts there. Big action in Hambrug – go read at Axis

  18. Weight of Glory says:

    Lizarde1,

    “Big action in Hambrug – go read at Axis”

    Where did you read this?

  19. Weight of Glory says:

    dang! no one has posted in a while. Guess you guys are all out on a Friday night participating in the activity commonly known as “having a life.” Oh well. Guess I’ll go watch a movie with the Mrs. Then read a little bit of the Canterbury Tales. I’ll check back in later to see if the next shoe has dropped, or polonium plopped, or theory flopped.

  20. mariposa says:

    Hey CP, do you have a link to the Hamburg apt. story you put in your first post? Good background info on the Russian “3 amigos” in that Guardian story — thanks for posting it.