The Curious Deaths Of Kremlin Critics
Two weeks from now in Surrey, England, a coroner's inquest is scheduled for a most peculiar death.
Here are the facts: In November 2012, a 44-year-old man died while out jogging near his Surrey home. The man was reported to have been in robust health, and police declared that the death was not suspicious.
But here are a few more facts: The jogger was a Russian banker who had fled Russia after helping expose tax fraud that implicated both the Mafia and the Russian state. Traces of a rare, poisonous flowering plant were found in his stomach.
This is one of several cases raising questions about why opponents of the Kremlin seem to be dying at an unusual rate.
"Vladimir Putin's enemies have this uncanny habit of being killed," says Guardian correspondent Luke Harding.
He says authorities couldn't find a cause of death in the case of the banker turned whistleblower, Alexander Perepilichny. "They decided that there was no foul play and it was just a kind of unexplained case that sometimes happens."
But a botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, southwest London, was called in just last year to conduct more tests. What she found caused a sensation, says Harding: Gelsemium elegans, a lethal plant favored by Chinese and Russian assassins.
"We're talking about suburban England and a [plant] that comes from the Himalayas being used. It's not growing in your or my back garden," he says. "And I think the calculation was that it would never be discovered — that this would just be simply an unexplained murder, and the whole thing would go away."
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/08/30/491898040/the-curious-deaths-of-kremlin-critics?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160830
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Their unexpected deaths just prove how right and good and virtuous God's chosen messengers like Putin are.
(And, seriously, if I have to use the 
tag y'all need serious help.)
