Alexander Litvinenko and the most radioactive towel in history

[n2doc]

by Luke Harding

It was a warm autumn day when the two Russian visitors arrived in Grosvenor Street, central London. Their names were Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun; the date was 16 October 2006. They had arrived that morning from Moscow carrying something that British customs failed to detect. Not drugs or large sums of cash, but something so otherworldly, it had never been seen before in the UK.

The substance was polonium, a highly radioactive isotope. It is probably the most toxic poison known to man when swallowed or inhaled – more than 100bn times more deadly than hydrogen cyanide. It had come from a Russian nuclear reactor. The job of Lugovoi and Kovtun was to deploy it. They had come to poison Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident, MI6 employee and Kremlin critic. The visiting killers had no personal grudge against their target. They had been sent by Russia’s FSB spy agency, in an operation likely to have been approved by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

Scotland Yard has never established how the assassins transported the polonium. The amounts were very small and easy to disguise. There are several possibilities: a container with the poison administered by a pipette-style dropper. Or an aerosol-like spray. Even a modified fountain pen would do the trick. Within its container, the polonium was safe. Out of it, it was highly dangerous. Ingest it, and you were dead.

Lugovoi and Kovtun, it would become apparent, had no idea what they were carrying. Their behaviour in Britain was idiotic, verging on suicidal. Nobody in Moscow appears to have told them Po-210 had intensely radioactive properties. Or that it left a trace – placing them in specific locations and indicating, via telltale alpha-radiation markings, who sat where. It was possible to identify anything and everything these clueless assassins touched.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/06/alexander-litvinenko-and-the-most-radioactive-towel-in-history

[Herman4747]

1. Poor guy. Putin is truly wicked at times.

[vanamonde]

2. So why aren't Lugovoi and Kovtun dead?

They didn't ingest it but surely they got a big dose of radiation.

[arendt]

3. This was fiction in 2004. But, no mobster would have known...

Martin Cruz Smith's Wolves Eat Dogs described a polonium poisoning TWO YEARS before Litvinenko was killed.

It is a complete propaganda to pin this amateurish killing on the very professional Russian Security services. Litvinenko was known to have tried to blackmail oligarchs in London. The fact the assassins left a trail indicates they were amateurs.

It is completely possible one of the oligarchs read the book by Smith and thought it was a great idea.

I am so sick of the propaganda machine.