Dec 08 2006

Radiation Shows Up In Hamburg, Germany

OK, one more piece in the puzzle as radiation has been detected in the Hamburg apartment of Dmitry Kuvton:

German police say they have found indications of radiation in an apartment apparently used by a contact of fatally poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

The traces of radiation turned up in the northern city of Hamburg in the apartment used by Dmitry Kovtun, apparently the same man who met Litvinenko in London on November 1, the day he is believed to have fallen mortally ill.

“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.

Next question is where did this Polonium come from prior to Hamburg and was it destined for London? I now there is this amazing tea cup story and how it contaminated a dish washer. But people take drinks in their rooms and we have no idea which cup or glass or whatever contaminated the dishwasher. We still have contaminated rooms – which get cleaned during the day and may have been the source not only for the dirty cup, but residue on many other items like dishes and glasses. So while the media grasps the assassin theory, we have one path for the smuggling angle (which is now clearly something that must also have happened).

111 responses so far

111 Responses to “Radiation Shows Up In Hamburg, Germany”

  1. Lizarde1 says:

    So assassin theorists how do you explain this? There was none in Kovtov’s apartment but there was some in his wife’s and mother in law’s -= this is beginning to look like the murderers were the wife and mother in law LOL

  2. lostinthedrift says:

    Given a contaminated Hamburg apartment, I don’t see how it could be assassination unless the assassin is one of the three. It would just be too much of a coincidence. If that is the case and that person dropped Po-210 in Litvinenko’s tea, he is a serious nut job who knows nothing about his weapon, and must therefore be characterized as an exceptionally incompetent individual.

    Regardless if it’s assassination or smuggling, it is very alarming. In the first case we have a bunch of people around with huge amounts of radioactive material that they have no interest in shielding the public from, and in the other case someone wants a lot, A LOT, of polonium for some purpose which is quite unclear.

  3. jerry says:

    Well, hot spots doesn’t appear where you’d expect – that’s why there is contamination. So Kovtun might have brought home a present from London for his relatives and the present got contaminated near the time everything else was. The single very contaminated cup in the Millennium bar, even after a month of dishwashing, is the real key to an assassination; K/L could be the assassins, or secondary victims if a very elaborate effort was made to trail Po around Europe to frame them. I’ll go for assassins (with a high probability it’s Lugovoi).

  4. lostinthedrift says:

    Oh, I forget, did Kovtun go back home to Hamburg or did he go directly to Moscow? He is in Moscow now, right?

  5. Gotta Know says:

    Enlightened, you’re not listening, in fact you missed the whole point. All three of the hotels visited recently by Lugovoi have traces of P-210. Get it?? He was carrying the stuff at least three times, that is Strata’s main argument against assassination.

  6. Gotta Know says:

    Clarice said:

    “ts, it doesn’t challenge my assumptions at all. I have never believed that lugovoy and Litvinenko were involved in smuggling po 210. I have always believed Litvinenko was assassinated, and I think he and Kovtun were probably as well.”

    That’s the problem, you have “never” and “always.” Even when the facts point in other directions you are sticking to your original thesis. Why don’t you weigh the new information, and how do you explain the three separate hotel contaminations from three previous visits to the UK?

  7. Gotta Know says:

    “The single very contaminated cup in the Millennium bar, even after a month of dishwashing, is the real key to an assassination; K/L could be the assassins, or secondary victims if a very elaborate effort was made to trail Po around Europe to frame them. ”

    Jerry your entire theory is predicated on this one cup, and neither you nor I nor any poster here knows how strong this P-210 is, or how it could be spread and in what quantities. It could simply be the cup that Litvinenko drank from after he had already ingested it, from an accident or other assassination attempt or whatever. Do you really think the number of dishwashings means anything whatsoever?

  8. jerry says:

    It’s true that I think the cup is important and this might be wrong, so far I’ve only seen the one Mirror article about it – plus a couple of mentions on TV. The reason I think it is important is because the Counterterrorism person’s quotes were so striking:

    “”It’s now a near certainty Mr Litvinenko was poisoned by having polonium 210 slipped into his drink at the hotel…. We’ve found a cup almost certainly the one poisoned as it has such a high radiation read out.”

    The sense of certainty, rather than caution, and the very high radiation level mentioned made this seem to me to be a very important article: describing both the murder method and the evidence. The quote does make clear that there was a very high level of radiation associated with a single cup, this would have been after at least several washings – and, believe it or not, washing does a good job of removong contamination (if it hasn’t bee absorbed into a porous surface – a china tea cup would have a somewhat porous surface in my opinion, while a glass cup would not, and this may be why the cup is still very hot).

  9. Barbara says:

    My problem with this cup is that if washing clothes in a washing machine will get rid of polonium why are traces still on a cup that has gone through a dishwasher numerous times . A dishwasher is supposed to sterilize dishes and silverware with scalding hot water. A whole lot hotter than a washing machine and an industrial dishwasher would be more than efficient than home dishwashers which are pretty good themselves.

    Besides, if anyone else drank out of this cup between washings they would surely be at risk. And if it was washed numerous times that would mean numerous people were contaminated.

    This cup evidently showed up only in the Mirror and two tv spots.
    I’m not saying it isn’t true. I’m saying it makes no sense.

  10. lostinthedrift says:

    Barbara, exactly, it does not make sense. That would mean that the cup is irradiated by hard radiation.

  11. lostinthedrift says:

    Come to think of it, Po-210 does emit some slight amount of gamma radiation. Perhaps that’s the traces they’re finding. I’m surprised they can detect it, at such low levels.