Charges Brought In Litvinenko Murder By Polonium Case

The British investigation into who murdered Alexander Litvinenko has finally yielded some results.

n ex-KGB agent is to be charged in connection with the murder of poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Moscow-based Andrei Lugovoy, although there is no extradition treaty with Russia.

That last part is key. The British government will not be able to get at Lugovoy because they don't have extradition with Russia. Considering that many believe that the Russian government was behind the murder/assassination of Litvinenko by Polonium 210, there's little chance that Lugovoy would ever be brought before a British court to face the charges.

Lugovoy (or Lugovoi) has been tied to other locations where high levels of Polonium 210 were discovered, including hotels and restaurants around London, though one has to wonder about the motive and rationale for using such a unique poison to kill Litvinenko.

Truthdig notes a BBC report that shows Lugovoi is defiant and claims to be a victim of the poisoning, not the perpetrator.

Others commenting: AJ Strata, and A Second Hand Conjecture.

Dropping Like Flies

Yet another critic of Russia's Putin has died under mysterious circumstances.

Ivan Safronov, the military affairs writer for Kommersant, died Friday after falling from a fifth-story window in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow, officials said. His body was found by neighbors shortly after the fall.

With prosecutors investigating the death, Kommersant and some other media suggested foul play.

"The suicide theory has become dominant in the investigation, but all those who knew Ivan Safronov categorically reject it," Kommersant said in an article Monday.

He literally fell to his death. His friends and those who knew him believe that it was a murder meant to look like a suicide.

Another critic, who recently appeared on NBC's Dateline, was found shot to death.

Paul Joyal, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, was shot in his driveway just four days after he appeared in a "Dateline NBC" segment that was critical of Putin and his government.

After it was reported that Joyal's wallet was stolen during the shooting, some questions of a broader conspiracy waned; but Joyal's son Alex showed his father's billfold to a reporter from The Post, as Eric Rich writes this morning. Joyal was shot following a meeting with Putin's former KGB boss, Oleg Kalugin at the International Spy Museum, where Kalugin is a board member. The family refuses to speculate on the motive of the shooting.

This could be nothing but a serious of coincidences resulting in people who may undermine or embarass Putin's regime turning up dead. Or not.

This makes the third such critic to die under strange circumstances and doesn't count the mysterious poisoning of other rivals, like Viktor Yushchenko. Alexander Litvinenko was killed by exposure to Polonium 210.

The body count keeps piling up around the world, and the tie that binds appears to be the Kremlin up to its old tricks.

UPDATE:
Jammie Wearing Fool notes that criticizing Putin is bad for your health.

It certainly seems that way. That has a chilling effect on free speech and the press, though some are pressing the matter: The paper that Safronov wrote for, has an update on the now criminal investigation of Safronov's death. Does his death have something to do with an expose he was going to run on arms sales to the Middle East?

The Taganka prosecutor’s office in Moscow has initiated a criminal investigation on the forcible suicide of Kommersant journalist Ivan Safronov, who died under unknown circumstances last Friday when he fell from a window in the stairway of the Khrushchev-era five-story building in which he lived. The police and prosecutor initially characterized his death as suicide. Safronov, who turned 51 last month, wrote about the army and space. It is known that he was preparing a publication on Russian arms deliveries to the Middle East that could have caused a major scandal.

Good for the paper to push forward despite the fact that it is putting other journalists in harm's way.

Cop Out

Did Time magazine have trouble trying to figure out the person of the year and voted for everyone, which is another way of saying that they voted for no one?

Here are a couple of other people who could have been chosen as Person of the Year for their contributions and/or impact on the world:

Charles Schumer - for being the money man behind the Democrat return to power in the Senate.

Nancy Pelosi - for managing to herd cats and knock off the GOP in the House.

George Bush - embattled and still fighting the war on terror as he thinks it must be fought, despite the lagging popularity of the war and the negative view of him personally.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - the genocidal intentioned thug in charge in Iran. Run Holocaust denial conferences? Check. Call for destruction of Israel? Check. Work towards obtaining nuclear weapons? Check. Watching the UN flail about uselessly? Priceless.

Ariel Sharon - his policy of disengagement meant withdrawing Israel from Gaza and how do the Palestinians respond to this action, and Sharon's subsequent incapacitating stroke? They start a war, and are soon joined by Hizbullah who drags Lebanon into a war.

Nasrallah - the Hizbullah thug in charge who unilaterally pulled Lebanon into a devastating war with Israel and who now seeks to take over Lebanon by trying to take down the Siniora government.

The Insurgent - not a person, but a group whose successes aren't measured on the battlefield (because they haven't had any) but by the media's ability to turn their continued existence into a sign that the US has lost a war in Iraq.

Vladamir Putin - the former head of the KGB may be returning to his roots, going after political threats the old fashioned way. Assassinations and intimidations, including the very public death of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko.

The Next Polonium Victim

Mario Scaramella has been contaminated with significant amounts of Polonium 210. He would be the second person to be so-contaminated. Alexander Litvinenko was the first and he's now dead. Firedoglake wonders just what kind of form was used in the poisoning and goes into the physiological reactions and wonders whether Litvinenko was injected with the polonium rather than consuming or inhaling it. Her reasoning is pretty persuasive based on the amounts of radioactive material used and the fact that polonium 210 is primarily an alpha emitter.

So, who exactly was behind this? Putin and/or rogue elements within the Russian government are leading contenders, and this could be a very public way of sending messages to opponents of the Russian government.

AJ Strata and Pajamas Media are on top of the situation with analysis and updates.

UPDATE:
The Guardian says that Scaramella does not show any signs of radiation poisoning.

The Italian academic, who met the ex-KGB man on the day he was allegedly poisoned, tested positive yesterday for a "significant quantity" of the radioactive substance, polonium-210, which is believed to have killed Mr Litvinenko.

But doctors at London's University College Hospital said today that preliminary test results carried out on him showed no sign of radiation toxicity.

Curious. Very curious.

Technorati: Litvinenko, polonium 210, Alexander Litvinenko, kgb, poisoning, politics, Mario Scaramella.

The Million Dollar Question

What exactly is going on here. Who killed Alexander Litvinenko using a radioactive isotope, Polonium 210? It was apparently sprayed on the sushi Litvinenko was eating, but no one knows who did it or why. There are lots of fingers pointing in the direction of one Vladamir Putin, but no one really knows for sure. Heck, it could have been an accident for all we know.

All that is known is that the number of people exposed to isotope continues to grow. Just today, an Italian journalist was confirmed to have been exposed as well:

Italian academic Mario Scaramella has tested positive for the same toxin that killed former Russian spy, Britain's Sky Television News reported Friday.

Scaramella, who was one of the last people to see former Soviet spy Alexander Litvinenko before he fell ill, tested positive for a significant amount of polonium-210, Sky said.

The academic had come from Rome to meet with Litvinenko at a sushi bar in London on Nov. 1 -- the day the former intelligence agent first reported the symptoms that ultimately led to his death at a central London hospital.

Several airliners have been grounded and thousands of people have been contacted in relation to possible contamination. The investigation continues to grow, and authorities around the world are looking at who may have been behind the poisoning along with the motivation to conduct such an attack.

The isotope does not occur naturally, and it takes certain kinds of specialized equipment to produce.

Litvinenko's autopsy is underway in London, and experts are trying to determine the exact cause of death and the examiners were wearing protective clothing and radiation levels were being monitored constantly during the examination. Hot Air has more.

So, who was behind the attack? Rogue elements in the former KGB? That isn't good news, but that's also just one of a whole host of bad actors who might have been behind the attack. Another possibility is that Litvinenko or his companions accidentally poisoned themselves.

Mr. Epstein figures there are two possible ways Litvinenko got poisoned. One is that he was murdered when "someone surreptitiously sprinkled particles of Polonium 210 in his food." The second hypothesis is that it was an accident, in which "the particles leaked out of a faulty container of Polonium 210 that he (or his associates) were carrying."

Mr. Epstein reckons that "a former KGB agent might have a interest in obtaining a smuggled sample of Polonium 210 for a host of reasons, including arranging a sale to an intermediary, establishing the bona fides of someone claiming to have access to a Russian nuclear facility, or investigating the international black market in nuke components." He writes that according to Mario Scaramella, an Italian defense consultant who had lunch with Litvinenko at the Itsu Sushi buffet the day he was poisoned, " Litvinenko's past interests, included the ‘smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia' for the KGB. If true, the possibility that Litvinenko had a vial of Polonium 210 in his possession cannot be precluded."

With any damaged container, Mr. Epstein writes, particles can leak onto clothes,"such as a sleeve or handkerchief, and be ingested. The accident hypothesis would further account the radiation spreading it to multiple locations." He concludes by noting that at this point, "both the murder and accident hypothesis are equally nefarious — and viable." What struck us about the point, aside from the fact that Mr. Epstein is one of the shrewdest analysts around, is that as he begins to sketch the case, this mystery is not merely one of those British crimes we all love to read about in Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle but a situation in real life that provides a window into why the stakes in the Middle East are so high.

The investigators are obviously going to be looking at this case from all angles. I frankly don't know what to make of the whole thing. If you want a good roundup of the basic facts of this case, see here.

Others blogging: AJ Strata, Decision 08, and Ace of Spades.

UPDATE:
The Polonium 210 apparently has been traced back to a Russian nuclear power plant. Someone better explain how the material was removed from the facility, because if they could manage to get out this stuff, there's no telling what else might be smuggled out. The current tally of sites that have screened positive include 10 locations in England and five planes.

Allah has updated his coverage to note that one of Litvinenko's relatives has also tested positive. Not good at all.

Lorie Byrd at Wizbang also comments that the FSB is the new KGB. I'd suggest that the old KGB never went away; it was simply renamed and recast.

UPDATE:
Make that the wife who tested positive.

Technorati: Litvinenko, polonium 210, Alexander Litvinenko, kgb, poisoning, politics, Mario Scaramella.