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'"
because not only is he interested in high tech assassination, he's also in favor of Open Sores.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
10:1 this guy dies mysteriously or disappears.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
There was absolutely no need for the James Bond style assasination. Why not just shoot the bugger using a silencer? Advantages of using a gun:
1. Weapon doesn't decay.
2. Don't need to visit a nuclear reactor (which will have very restricted access on) to get one.
3. Doesn't leave a HUGE trail of everywhere you have been with it.
4. Less chance of target surving long enough to give full description of you.
This assasination was far too elaborate...
Could we change the Slashdot headline to say they have charged someone. Legally a representative of the police or any legal branch of a government, would not say "We've identified the killer". It is up to the courts to decide if he killed someone, not the police. The police can only supply evidence to the prosecutor and a jury will decide if he did it or not.
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").
Disclaimer: IAAP (I Am A Physicist)
Just think - if you could buy as much polonium 210 as what was used against Litvinenko, do you really think that any postage service would want to deliver a radioactive package?
Actually, Polonium 210 is an alpha emitter, which means it's quite safe unless you ingest or inhale it (at which point even small amounts become deadly). Just putting it in a paper bag would shield you from much of the radiation. As long as it was securely packaged, I don't think it would be unsafe to mail.
And that's exactly why I believe this method was used.
No individual or even group would have been able to get that much polonium, without at least the tacit approval of a government with a sufficiently advanced nuclear program. The list of potential suppliers is very short.
This was a message, which is very clear to dissenters and critics: you can't hide. We can get to you, or at least those that are close to you, no matter where you are.
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.
But Britain is an industrialized society, so I don't think it's got anything to do with hay or hey as it's sometimes written.
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