Slashdot Mirror
British Police Identify Killer in Radiation Case
reporter writes "According to a front-page story by The Guardian, British authorities have identified Andrei Lugovoi to be the murderer who used radioactive pollonium-210 to kill Andrei Litvinenko. The British government will ask Moscow to extradite Lugovoi. The Guardian states: 'Associates of the dead man have repeatedly accused President Vladimir Putin's government of being behind his murder, a claim the Kremlin rejects. While it is known that detectives believe they have uncovered evidence pointing to Mr Lugovoi's involvement, it is not clear whether they have established a motive for the murder'"
Haha! Busted. He left a radioactive trail all over London, even in an airplane he travelled on. He's the only person who can be tied to all the locations they've found traces of radioactive polonium. Of course, he's claiming someone set him up by following him around and dropping the stuff wherever he went. We'll see if the Russians will hand him over. If they don't, it's gonna look mighty suspicious. If they do, he's gonna say Putin put him up to it, whether he did or not.
The UK may have to hand over a scummy billionaire who profited immensely off of the rush to privatize Russia, which would be cool: two scumbags busted for the price of one.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I think this is a real test case of whether the notion of the UK as a nation holds any actual power in the World. The Russian constitution, as I understand it, obliges the Russian government NOT to render Russian citizens for extradition, despite the fact that in Britain the defendent will assuredly recieve a fair trial (either in the UK or by analogy to the Lockerbie case, in a third country).
If the Russian government DID sponsor an assassination within British territory, it is an affront to our sovereignty and should be exposed. If on the other hand it was NOT, then it is equally desirable that the Russian government be cleared of that.
If the UK does not take a strong, principled stand on this issue, then I feel that our identity of "British" is very probably meaningless.
I suspect the Russian government knows full well that the British Government can't hand over Boris Berezovsky. That's why they're likely to make the request. It's not, on the face of it, unreasonable. Just legally impossible. But Britain's "refusal" to hand him over will mean that Russia has a better bargaining position. They can push Britain into offering an alternative of greater value.
Already, the Russians are claiming that it's against their Constitution to allow extraditions. (Read the last paragraph in the article.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Why multiple exposures? Why so sloppy? Why use so much? They could have used a *much*, *much*, *much* smaller amount and still have made the same statement. Why was there so much of the stuff all around, but only a small amount (by a large measure) made it into the target of the assassination? It just doesn't add up. It seems like these guys were up to something else.
As detailed in Litvinenko's book (with Yuri Felshtinsky) published right after he was poisoned to death _Blowing Up Russia_, Russia's KGB (by whatever new name disguises it) has been working against the conversion to democracy, especially since KGB exec Putin replaced Yeltsin the drunken reformer. According to Litvinenko before he died (reported in the book), he was being chased and then killed for reporting on the faked 1999 "apartment bombings" in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia which the KGB staged to get Yeltsin to invade Chechnya on the pretext of "Islamic terrorism". The book is banned (and was confiscated) in Russia.
"Think. It ain't illegal yet." - George Clinton with Funkadelic
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make install -not war