Alexandre Litvinenko

Alexandre Valtérovich Litvinenko (), (1962 - November 23rd 2006), old agent of the Russian secret services , ex- Lieutenant-colonel of FSB (ex- the KGB).

Opponent with Vladimir Poutine since 1990, date on which he shows the Russian president publicly to neglect the fight against the corruption, he leaves his country in 2000 to be established with London where he binds friendship with the representative of the separatists tchetchenes Akhmed Zakaïev and old a Oligarque Russian him also dependant with the djihaddists tchetchenes, Boris Berezovsky, which lodges it and work gives him. Both are sought by the Russian parquet floor which requires their extradition. Litvinenko publishes two years later a book in which he shows the Russian secret services to have organized themselves the wave of attacks allotted to the Tchétchène S in 1999. Litvinenko was mortally poisoned at the end of 2006 in still not-elucidated circumstances.

Poisoning

At the beginning of November 2006, it falls seriously sick after having dined in a restaurant on Sushi S with London with a contact, Italian Mario Scaramella, applicant to hold evidence connecting the government of Vladimir Poutine to the assassination of the Russian journalist and adverse Anna Politkovskaïa.

He dies on November 23rd, with 21:21 with the University College Hospital of London. His/her father announces a few days later that Alexandre Litvinenko converted with the Islam two days before his death and wishes being buried according to the Moslem rite.

“High quantities of radiations, probably due to a substance called Polonium 210”, a radioactive matter highly , were detected in the Urine S of the former spy according to the British health authorities. Polonium sublimates with 50 °C, i.e. it passes from the solid state to the gas state, or the reverse, without passing by the liquid state. After having believed that poisoning had taken place in a restaurant with sushi, the authorities confirm that poisoning is in fact produced with the bar of a large London hotel.

November 24th, 2006, the police force undertakes excavations in the residence and the garden of Litvinenko. According to the London daily newspaper The Independent , all the assumptions of death are then in examination by the British police force, including that of the suicide, which could have been made in order to discredit the president Putin. Indeed, several speculations circulate on the silent partners of dead of Litvinenko, but no track is still privileged by the investigators of the Scotland Yard.

December 6th, 2006, Scotland Yard regards from now on the death of Alexandre Litvinenko as a murder.

The Russian businessman Andrei Lougovoï, suspected by the English legal authorities of being mixed with poisoning, denies his implication and rejects the accusion on the British secret services of MI6, which would have liked to get rid of a cumbersome investigator. According to the edition of October 27th, 2007 of the Daily Mail, Litvinenko would actually have been employed by the MI6.

The posthumous declaration of Litvinenko

Three days before its death, Litvenenko dictated a posthumous declaration with his/her friend, Alex Goldfarb (also the president of the “foundation of civic freedoms” of Boris Abramovitch Berezovski). It blamed directly president Putin in his poisoning.

I want to thank several people. My doctors, nurses and the personnel of the hospital who do all that they can for me, the British police force which looks further into my business with strength and professionalism and protects me, me and my family. I want to thank the British government for his attention in my connection. I am honoured to be a British citizen. I want to thank the British public for his messages of support and the interest which it showed towards my critical condition. I thank my Marina wife, who supported me. My love for it and my two sons do not know any limit. I can clearly hear the beat of the wings of the angel of Death. Perhaps can I distort company to him, but I must say that my legs do not run as quickly as I would like it. I thus think that it is time to speak a little about the persons in charge of my condition present. You can succeed in making me conceal, but this silence has a price. You showed yourselves as cruel and pitiless as your most hostile critics claim it. You showed that you did not have a respect for the life, the freedom and the values of civilization. You were unworthy of your functions, of the confidence of the civilized men and women. You can succeed in making conceal a man but the howls of protest of the whole world will resound with your ears during the remainder of your life, Mr. Putin. That God forgives you for what you did, not only with me but still in Russia and with its peuple.

Questioned at the time of a press conference on this letter, Vladimir Poutine answered that “ If this letter really exists, I wonder why it was not published of alive sound ”.

Reactions of the Russian authorities

The Service of the information external of Russia (SVR) rejected the charges on its possible implication in the poisoning of the former officer of the Russian FSB Alexandre Litvinenko in London.

“the SVR has nothing to do with the bad health condition of Alexandre Litvinenko”, declared the chief of the Press Office of the SVR Sergueï Ivanov. The information disseminated by certain media on the implication of the Service in this incident is “purely false and unfounded”, he added.

Sergueï Iastrjembski, special representative of the Russian president, qualified “worrying coincidence” the deaths of opponents to the Russian mode in place with the behavior of international forums where the president of the Federation of Russia takes part (the journalist Anna Politkovskaïa had found death on October 7th, 2006).

“An obviously excessive number of coincidences of resounding deaths people who, of their alive, positioned while opposing to the Russian capacity in place, with the international demonstrations to which takes part the president of the Federation of Russia is at the very least worrying”, in particular declared the special representative of the Russian president for the relations with the European Union, intervening Friday in front of the journalists with Helsinki at the conclusion of the top Russia-EU.

Sergueï Iastrjembski said not to be in favor of the theory of the plots. “At all events, there is well the impression to be in the presence of a well orchestrated campaign or even of a whole plan of continuous denigration of Russia and its direction”, he added.

The Russian agency ITAR-TASS shows the British agency of the public relations Bell Pottinger, near in Bérézovski, to be behind the denigration campaign of the Russian president. The Russian analysts, and even the president of the businesses external of the Duma Konstantin Kosatchev, show the close mediums with the separatists tchetchenes (of which the emissary of the Itchkérie Akhmad Zakhaev sought for murder by Russia and refugee in London, like his Bérézovski sympathizer, with whom Litvinenko had multiple contacts) to be implied in this assassination, for discrediting the Russian president indeed. According to the London daily newspaper The Independent , polonium 210 traces would have been found in the offices of Boris Berezovsky.

Polonium 210

The Polonium 210 is a very powerful poison produced in very small quantities - 100 grams per annum prolonged irradiation of Bismuth in the heart of a nuclear reactor. It is enough to a negligible quantity (lower than the microgram) to cause poisoning. However, the polonium 210 ingestion, although mortal, is famous to cause a slow death, to leave traces radioactive easily locatable (what made it possible Scotland Yard to quickly recall the course of Litvinenko), and in fact, is seldom used by the services, which seems to legitimate the thesis of handling.

In spite of its toxicity, polonium 210 is available to the sale (in particular via Internet) without presenting of particular document in proof, in a form preventing from diverting it its destination first and in negligible quantities. It has some industrial applications indeed.

Works

A. Litvinenko and A. Goldfarb. Gang from Lubyanka , Grani, New York, 2002.
Y. Felshtinsky, A. Litvinenko, and G. Andrews, Blowing up Russia: Terror from within. 2002. (autoreporting)

A. Litvinenko and A.Goldfarb " meutre of a dissident" , Robert Laffont

External bonds

Terror99 Information on the attacks of 1999 and books of Alexandre Litvinenko
Claude Rainaudi Litvinenko Business: the assumption of nuclear terrorism, December 23rd, 2006.
Alain Rodier, Mystery around the poisoning of Alexandre Litvinenko, CF 2R, December 2006.
Jacques Sapir Litvinenko: radioactive stones of Small Poucets of London, Le Figaro, December 5th, 2006.

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