Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 11:37 pm Post subject:
But no mention of the Litvinenko book Blowing Up Russia all about how Vladimir Putin was involved in Blowing Up bombs in Moscow to start a war with Chechnya.
Andrey Lugovoy – Former Security Officer http://rt.com/programs/spotlight/litvinenko-death-mystery-spotlight/
The Alexander Litvinenko poisoning is back in the limelight. While the British authorities keep claiming Andrey Lugovoy is the main suspect in the murder plot, Moscow has dramatically changed its position. It has launched a criminal case into Lugovoy’s attempted murder, maintaining he is a victim, too. The long-lasting contradiction continues to mar Russia-UK relations. So is there a chance that both sides will finally compromise? We’re asking the victim – and the suspect – himself, former Security officer and Russian Parliamentary Deputy Andrey Lugovoy.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 9:07 pm Post subject:
too often forgotten aspect to the story
Revealed: Poisoned ex-Russian spy Litvinenko WAS a paid-up MI6 agent
The former Russian spy poisoned in a London hotel was an MI6 agent, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Alexander Litvinenko was receiving a retainer of around £2,000 a month from the British security services at the time he was murdered.
The disclosure, by diplomatic and intelligence sources, is the latest twist in the Litvinenko affair, which has plunged relations between London and Moscow to their lowest point since the Cold War.
On the day of the poisoning, November 1, former KGB agent Mr Litvinenko met prime suspect Andrei Lugovoy at the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square, London.
Mr Lugovoy claims that Mr Litvinenko tried to recruit him to supply information to MI6.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-490007/Revealed-Poisoned-ex-Ru ssian-spy-Litvinenko-WAS-paid-MI6-agent.html
The weird thing is not that polonium was used 'cos we know money is no object for these Western banker/intel crooks but that someobody would use a poion that leaves loads of really obvious detectable traces everywhere.
insidejob wrote:
The idea that Litvinenko was murdered through the use of Polonium is total rubbish.
What is more likely? That Litvineko poisoned himself accidentally whilst smuggling Polonium.
Litvinenko father denounces 'traitor' son
By Anna Malpas (AFP) – 4 hours ago
MOSCOW — The father of the Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko -- who died of radiation poisoning in Britain -- condemned his son as a traitor and asked Russia for forgiveness in a television interview on Thursday.
"I ask you to forgive me, my motherland, forgive me for God's sake!" Valter Litvinenko told state-controlled Channel One in an interview conducted at his home in Italy.
Alexander Litvinenko, 43, a former FSB officer, died in hospital after drinking tea laced with polonium at a London hotel in November 2006, pointing the blame at the Kremlin. His death sparked a diplomatic crisis between Russia and Britain.
"When it turned out that he was an MI6 agent, it was a disgrace to me, to all of our family," Valter Litvinenko said, describing his son as "a traitor."
During his often tearful interview the 73-year-old said reports in British media that his son was working for British intelligence were "like a switch going on in my head".
Litvinenko's widow told the BBC Russian Service last year that her husband had worked as a consultant on organised crime for the British secret services.
His elderly father was shown wrapped up in winter clothes in his Italian apartment in the small town of Montemarciano, complaining that his electricity had been cut off and saying he wanted to move back to Russia.
Valter Litvinenko also gave an interview to Kremlin-funded English-language television channel RT, where he was shown praying to icons in his apartment and talking of his wife's recent death.
The channel stressed that Valter Litvinenko had previously accused the Kremlin of involvement in his son's death and hobnobbed with its opponents including businessman Boris Berezovsky, who has asylum in Britain.
"There were very few people who said as many horrible things about Putin," Valter Litvinenko, referring to himself and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the former Russian president who is seeking to return to the Kremlin for a third term in March elections.
But he said he had now changed his mind about the Kremlin's role.
"Vladimir Vladimirovich, if you are watching this programme, please forgive me for all the slander that I said and wrote about you," he said, addressing Putin.
"If only I had known my son worked for British intelligence, I would not talk about his death. He could easily have been shot as a double agent. Betrayers should be shot," he said in an interview dubbed into English.
Alexander Litvinenko's friend and co-author, Alexander Goldfarb, harshly criticised Russian television as "shameless and inhumane" for airing the interviews, speaking on Echo of Moscow radio.
"They made use of the difficult psychological state of an elderly person in the aims of propaganda, to whitewash Sasha's murderers," he said, using a diminutive for Alexander.
Britain named its main suspect in its murder probe as a former FSB security agent and now Russian parliamentary deputy, Andrei Lugovoi, whom Russia refused to extradite.
Last year, Russia announced that its own investigation had found Lugovoi was also a victim in an assassination plot using polonium.
Russian television in 2006 exposed a British spy plot involving a fake rock in Moscow that contained electronic equipment.
It has recently devoted huge amounts of news coverage to a former British official's confirmation of the bizarre scheme. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 6:15 pm Post subject:
In Memoriam: Alexander Litvinenko (Full Version)
It started as a possible case of food poisoning but within weeks turned into a grim spectacle of enormous political proportions: Aleksander Litvinenko, former member of the Russian secret service, died in his place of residence London last November, after having been poisoned with a radioactive substance. The search for the possible perpetrators lead to a political difficult situation that reminded us of the dark days of the Cold War.
Three years ago Aleksander Litvinenko told his life story to documentary maker Jos De Putter. It is a wild tale full of conspiracies, assassination attempts and imputations. Litvinenko talks about his time with the secret service, about his experience in Chechnya, and in particular about the series of bomb attacks on Russian territory that led to the seizure of power by Vladimir Putin. According to Litvinenko those attacks were the work of the secret service.
After Litvinenko’s funeral in December 2006, Backlight spoke to Litvinenko’s widow. Marina Litvinenko is writing a book about her husband. The book will be published in May 2007 and the film rights have already been sold to Columbia Pictures. In this unique interview, she speaks about how they first met, how they fled to England and she speaks about Aleksander´s death agony. From www.vpro.nl
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2012 10:21 am Post subject:
Censored: MI5 links to murdered Litvinenko http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/censored-mi5-links-to-murde red-litvinenko-8160954.html
Government acts ahead of former Russian spy's inquest, as widow's lawyer says killing was 'state-sponsored terrorism'
Cahal Milmo Indie - Friday 21 September 2012
The Government has ordered potentially vital information about whether murdered former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko had links with the British intelligence services to be withheld from his inquest.
Scotland Yard investigated claims that Mr Litvinenko, who was poisoned with radioactive Polonium 210 in 2006, was in regular contact with MI6 or MI5 prior to his death as part of an inquiry which led to murder charges against two Russian citizens – both former KGB agents.
But a preliminary hearing for the long-delayed inquest into Mr Litvinenko's death, due to start in the new year, heard that Whitehall officials have asked for the findings relating to the intelligence agencies to be removed from the information due to be made public during the hearings.
The attempt to shroud any dealings with the former Russian agent in secrecy was disclosed as Mr Litvinenko's widow, Marina, said she wanted the proceedings to establish once and for all whether her husband was the victim of a "targeted assassination" on British soil by a foreign state.
The audacious killing of Mr Litvinenko, 43, who was poisoned in a Mayfair hotel, plunged relations between London and Moscow into their deepest freeze since the Cold War. The inquest is likely to renew tensions between the two countries at a time when both sides have been inching towards a new diplomatic detente. Moscow has consistently refused requests for the extradition of prime suspect Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent turned businessman who was elected a Russian MP. Mr Lugovoi, who is represented in the inquest proceedings, denies all involvement in Mr Litvinenko's death.
Lawyers for Mrs Litvinenko, who attended yesterday's hearing with the couple's son, Anatoly, said she and others believed the Russian state was responsible for her husband's death.
Ben Emmerson QC said: "If that hypothesis were to be evidentially substantiated, this would be an act of state-sponsored nuclear terrorism on the streets of London." A report by the Metropolitan Police summarising the findings of its investigations, including the question of whether Mr Litvinenko was assisting British intelligence, is due to be submitted to the inquest and interested parties within the next fortnight. The hearing was told that the Government has ordered that findings relating to Mr Litvinenko's alleged relationship with MI5 or MI6 have been shown to the coroner, High Court judge Sir Robert Owen, and his team but cannot be made public or shown to interested parties such as Mrs Litvinenko or Mr Lugovoi.
Once the report is submitted, Sir Robert can decide whether the redactions should remain. Any attempt to pull a permanent veil over whether Mr Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, had been in contact with British agents is likely to give rise to criticism of excessive secrecy. Following his death, it was reported that Mr Litvinenko had co-operated with British intelligence as part of the battle against organised crime from Russia and eastern Europe and may have been receiving a monthly retainer of £2,000.
Hugh Davies, counsel for the inquest, said that the redactions on behalf of the Government did not amount to an admission that Mr Litvinenko was working for the British security services and insisted all competing theories about the killing would be examined at the inquest. He added: "The court is committed to transparency."
The Yard investigation concluded that Mr Litvinenko was poisoned with the polonium while drinking tea at a meeting, allegedly with Mr Lugovoi and another former KGB agent, Dmitry Kovtun, at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair. Mr Emmerson said: "It is Mrs Litvinenko's firm position that this inquiry should be capable of investigating and determining whether her husband's killing was a targeted assassination of a British citizen carried out by agents of a foreign state in the sovereign territory of the United Kingdom."
Sir Robert signalled that he intended to allow the inquest to follow all relevant lines of inquiry, saying he endorsed a previous ruling in the case by Dr Andrew Reid, the St Pancras coroner.
In the ruling, released yesterday, Dr Reid said: "If Mr Litvinenko is shown to have died as a result of ingestion of Polonium 210 the public interest plainly demands and open and fearless investigation into the full circumstances, including how and why this fatal ingestion occurred. Any lesser level of inquiry would not command public confidence either nationally or internationally." _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
The British government was accused of colluding with the Russians to cover up vital evidence into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko at a pre-inquest hearing into the former KGB agent's death today.
Ben Emmerson QC, representing Mr Litvinenko's widow Marina, suggested that the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary were more interested in lucrative trade deals with Russia than justice and were attempting to close down the inquest by the back door.
The claims came as Neil Sheldon, for the Government, attempted to have an array of documents kept secret under Public Interest Immunity (PII)
“Given that we know that there have been many occasions in the past when PII has been improperly claimed, and given the public interest in transparency, it is crucial, absolutely crucial, that the outcome of this hearing is to scotch once and for all any possible suggestion that it is because David Cameron is promoting trade with Russia that he has tried to close down this inquest,” said Mr Emmerson.
Mr Sheldon argued that Foreign Secretary William Hague had signed the PII certificate because he had a duty to ensure that nothing emerged that posed a “real risk of serious harm to the public interest”.
While the extent or content of these documents, thought to be largely from the intelligence services, were not revealed to anyone else, a selection are to be put before Sir Robert Owen, assistant deputy coroner, who will make a decision tomorrow as to whether they will be made public.
Mr Litvinenko, 43, died of polonium-210 poisoning in November 2006 after meeting two former KGB contacts - Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun - at the Millennium Hotel in London's Grosvenor Square.
Prosecutors named Mr Lugovoy as the main suspect in the case but Russia has refused to extradite him to the UK for questioning. At a previous pre-hearing into his death Mr Emmerson said there was clear evidence that Mr Litvinenko was an MI6 agent and that Mr Lugovoy was acting under instruction from the Kremlin.
Today Mr Emmerson said that, if this evidence was now being withheld from the inquest under PII that the coroner could be placed in an impossible position.
“It could be that you issue a judgement that exonerates them even though you have been shown material that proves they are guilty. That is a staggering situation,” said the barrister, adding: “This is beginning to look like you are being steam-rollered by two states acting in collaboration with each other.”
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon May 20, 2013 2:06 pm Post subject:
oh not another Daily Mail - but the best article on this today is indeed from the Mail
Another victory for secret justice: Litvinenko inquest close to collapse after coroner rules crucial evidence should be heard behind closed doors
Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London hotel in 2006
Sir Robert Owen rules some parts of inquest should be heard in secret
Evidence of involvement of Russian government will be kept under wraps
Widow Marina describes decision as 'a tragedy for British justice'
Solicitors will push for a full inquiry to be heard in public
The inquest into the death of poisoned spy Alexander Litvinenko could be scrapped and replaced with a public inquiry to allow evidence to be heard in secret.
Coroner Sir Robert Owen ruled today that he cannot hear evidence on whether Mr Litvinenko's death could have been prevented, or any alleged links to the involvement of the Russian state, in public.
Mr Litvinenko's widow Marina described the decision as a 'frightening precedent' and 'a tragedy for British justice.'
Justice: The family of Alexander Litvinenko want his inquest to be held in public but a coroner has upheld an appeal by the UK Foreign Office for parts to be heard behind closed doors
Mr Litvinenko, 43, was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 while drinking tea at the Millennium Hotel in London's Grosvenor Square in 2006.
His family believes he was working for MI6 at the time and was killed on the orders of the Kremlin.
Under fire: Foreign Secretary William Hague has been accused by Mr Litvinenko's family of putting trade with Russia before exposing the truth about his death
The coroner's ruling was published today after he accepted an application by the UK Foreign Office to keep certain information under wraps.
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Evidence cannot be heard in secret as part of an inquest, but could be as part of a public inquiry.
Sir Robert said: 'It is my present view that I should hear submissions as to whether I should invite the Secretary of State (the Home Secretary) on behalf of Government to consider whether the power to hold an inquiry should be exercised in this case.'
He said that the issues of preventability and Russian involvement are of 'central importance' to the investigation into Mr Litvinenko's death.
Addressing the first issue, he said his duty to carry out 'a full, fair and fearless investigation' would be hampered if it was not included.
He also said that excluding key evidence on the issue of Russian involvement would cause him 'grave concern'.
The coroner went on: 'Were an inquiry to be held into the circumstances of Mr Litvinenko's death, the relevant material could be taken into account.'
A statement from Mrs Litvinenko's solicitors said: 'This is a very sad day for Mrs Litvinenko, a tragedy for British justice which has until now been respected around the world, and it is frightening precedent for all of those, around the world, who have been trying so hard to expose the crimes committed by conspiracy of organised that operate from the Kremlin.'
It added: 'Mrs Litvinenko is utterly dismayed by the Coroner's decision to abandon his search for the truth about Russian state responsibility for her husband's death.
'The effect of today's ruling is to protect those responsible for ordering the murder of a British citizen on the streets of London, and to allow the Russian government to shield behind a claim for secrecy made by William Hague with the backing of the Prime Minister David Cameron.'
'All those concerned with exposing the truth will be shocked and saddened that a political deal has been done between the two governments to prevent the truth from ever seeing the light of day.'
The statement from Mrs Litvinenko's solicitors said they would now be pressing the coroner to order a full public inquiry as a matter of urgency as this is 'the only way now that the truth can be exposed' despite meaning secret evidence will be considered in a closed session.
Alex Goldfarb, a friend of the Litvinenko family and his widow Marina, said the decision was 'deeply dismaying', and that it was 'upsetting' that in his view British government had prioritised its political relationship with Russia over the need to hold an open inquest.
He said: 'It appears the British government is more concerned about the use of chemical weapons in Syria than radioactive weapons being used on the streets of London.'
The widow of murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has suffered a "near-complete collapse of confidence" in the inquest into his death and will cease to participate unless an urgent public inquiry into the killing is ordered to replace it.
Lawyers for Marina Litvinenko, whose husband was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London in 2006, told a pre-inquest hearing at the High Court in London that the Government was leading a campaign to "coerce" her into giving up her attempts to establish why he was murdered.
Sir Robert Owen, the coroner, was told by lawyers for the Home Secretary Theresa May that his request to halt the inquest and replace it with a public inquiry, which would be able to hear secret evidence about issues including whether the killing was ordered by the Russian state, was being considered "at a very high level" of government.
In bitter exchanges arising from the ongoing the wrangle over what form of judicial process should be used to answer the questions about Mr Litvinenko's death, lawyers for Mrs Litvinenko accused the Government of doing its best to avoid establishing the truth about what took place.
The Government has succeeded in withholding some information from the public proceedings on the grounds of national security and argued that the inquest should continue - despite a statement from Sir Robert that he considers that the removal of the evidence makes it impossible for him to answer key questions such as whether there was state involvement in Mr Litvinenko's death.
Mr Litvinenko's family believe that the former Russian intelligence officer was working for MI6 at the time of this death and his murder was carried out on the orders of the Kremlin. They want to know whether the British authorities could have prevented the killing.
The 43-year-old father-of-one was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 while drinking tea at the Millennium Hotel in London's Grosvenor Square in November 2006. Andrei Lugovoi, a former officer with the FSB, the successor to the KGB, was charged with the killing but Russia refused his extradition, plunging Anglo-Russian relations into their worst crisis since the Cold War.
Ben Emmerson QC, for Mrs Litvinenko, said: "The position of Her Majesty's Government is that it is better for the administration of justice in the country to have an inquiry that cannot get to the truth than one that can."
He added: "It is difficult to escape the sense that [Mrs Litvinenko] has been shoved, shunted and pushed around by all the forces of Her Majesty's Government in order to attempt to coerce her into abandoning her search for the truth about her husband's death."
The hearing was told that unless a public inquiry was now forthcoming from the Government, she would drop out of the inquest process and seek a judicial review of any failure to order such an inquiry.
Mr Emmerson said alleged attempts to pressure Mrs Litvinenko had reached a new level in the last fortnight when a visit by Prime Minister David Cameron to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin had coincided with a direct phone call to her from the personal assistant of Foreign Office minister David Lidington to explain the nature of the talks and that the Government was still committed to a "full investigation" into her husband's death.
The hearing was told that the direct approach was made without the knowledge or participation of Mrs Litvinenko's lawyers. Mr Emmerson, who noted that his client was still waiting after seven months for a decision on whether her legal representation will be publicly funded, said: "It is a matter of the gravest concern that this type of approach is taking place."
Neil Garnham QC, for the Home Secretary, said Mr Lidington's staff had merely placed the call out of courtesy to Mrs Litvinenko to inform her about the nature of the talks between Mr Cameron and Mr Putin ahead of media reports, adding that the Government "wholeheartedly rejects" the claims about its conduct towards Mrs Litvinenko.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 10:50 am Post subject:
Big article in today's Mail
It's the murder mystery still causing political shockwaves in London and Moscow. But was the radioactive Russian spy killed by bungling MI6 agents?
One theory is that Putin's enemies in London arranged the death of Litvinenko so to cast suspicion on Putin. Even before Litvinenko was dead, websites controlled by Berezovsky had declared Putin the villain
It's the murder mystery still causing political shockwaves in London and Moscow. But was the radioactive Russian spy killed by bungling MI6 agents?
The autopsy was eerie, one of the oddest forensic post-mortem examinations in the annals of crime.
At a London hospital, three British pathologists covered themselves from head to toe in white protective suits before standing around a radioactive corpse that had been sealed in plastic for nearly a week.
The victim was Alexander Litvinenko, a 44-year-old ex-KGB officer who had defected from Russia to the United Kingdom in 2000. Now, six years later, he was dead in the most mysterious of circumstances.
Alexander Litvinenko, a 44-year-old ex-KGB officer who had defected from Russia to the United Kingdom in 2000, died on November 23, 2006, in the most mysterious of circumstances
Just a month earlier he had been admitted to hospital with severe abdominal pains, which were initially diagnosed as caused by thallium, a toxin used in Russian rat poison.
Since thallium was supposedly a favourite poison of the KGB in the Cold War era and Litvinenko was an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, it was believed Litvinenko might have been the victim of the FSB, the Russian security service that took over from the KGB.
All efforts to save him failed and, on November 23, 2006, he died, leaving behind a deathbed statement he had dictated to a friend, accusing Putin of orchestrating his murder.
Just two hours before his death, there had been another startling twist in the story. New medical tests revealed that the fatal poison was not thallium but polonium-210, one of the world’s most tightly controlled radioactive isotopes and a critical component in the making of early-stage nuclear bombs.
Its unexpected presence should have triggered an inquiry by international nuclear anti-proliferation agencies, anxious to find out which country was holding illicit stocks of this high-security substance.
Instead, the police assumed it had been smuggled into London solely to commit murder. But such a theory was, I believe, inherently unlikely.
Why would anyone use a nuclear weapon to kill an individual, when a knife, bullet or conventional poison would do the trick more quickly, efficiently and certainly? As an assassination weapon, polonium-210 would have to be handled with great caution, since it is extremely unstable and leaks into the air with ease. It would be potentially as deadly to the killer as the victim.
Nonetheless, the commonly held view was that the Russian secret service was behind the poisoning and a culprit was even named in the Press — a former KGB man named Andrei Lugovoi, whom Litvinenko had met at a London hotel a few days before he fell ill.
All efforts to save Alexander Litvinenko failed and, in November 2006, he died, leaving behind a deathbed statement he had dictated to a friend, accusing Putin of orchestrating his murder
The suggestion was that Lugovoi had slipped the polonium into Litvinenko’s tea.
Britain demanded that Russia extradite Lugovoi, so he could be tried for murder. When Russia refused, Britain expelled four Russian diplomats from London in reprisal. There was a stand-off.
What was the truth? That’s what I set out to discover — but only one thing was certain: the most difficult cases to crack are what I call ‘crimes of state’, in which national security interests collide and secrecy, conspiracy and paranoia combine to obfuscate the truth.
The death of Litvinenko in 2006 was a prime example. I spent months investigating his death, sifting the evidence, scrutinising official documents and interviewing witnesses and experts. I even went to Moscow to confront the alleged killer, Lugovoi, to hear his side of the story.
What I found led me to conclude that the accepted version of events is far from being the true story and raised a tantalising question: could the British secret service be to blame?
There is no doubt Andrei Lugovoi had been with Litvinenko in London. Witnesses saw them taking tea in the bar of the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, where Lugovoi was staying with his family. This was less than a day before Litvinenko became ill.
The commonly held view was that the Russian secret service was behind the poisoning and a culprit was even named in the Press - former KGB man Andrei Lugovoi, whom Litvinenko had met at a London hotel a few days before he fell ill
Subsequently, the bar as well as Lugovoi’s bedroom tested positive for polonium-210, leading to an early theory that Litvinenko had been poisoned in the hotel. But then it turned out some four hours earlier Litvinenko had had lunch at a sushi restaurant, which also tested positive for polonium.
Crucially, this suggested that Litvinenko had been contaminated before he took tea with Lugovoi.
It then turned out that the two had held a number of meetings in London weeks earlier, including one at a lap-dancing club called Hey Jo. The private booth they sat in was tested and also showed positive, as did the seat Lugovoi had occupied on a British Airways flight back to Moscow.
What was becoming apparent was that both men had been exposed to polonium-210 more than a month before Litvinenko died. But how?
When I met Lugovoi in his office in Moscow, he told me he and Litvinenko had both been intelligence officers in the KGB and FSB in the Nineties. Subsequently, Lugovoi had become a supporter of Putin, while Litvinenko had done everything he could to discredit Putin before defecting to London.
I asked how they came together a decade later. Lugovoi answered in a single word: Berezovsky.
Boris Berezovsky had once been the most powerful oligarch in Russia. He not only controlled whole sectors of the Russian economy and the country’s largest television channel, but he was part of the government apparatus, serving as the deputy secretary of its National Security Council.
Lugovoi and Litvinenko acted as Berezovsky’s protectors in the FSB. With an enigmatic smile, Lugovoi said the two of them had performed ‘extraordinary’ services for him, including one occasion when Litvinenko, with a gun in his hand, had prevented Moscow police from arresting Berezovsky on a murder charge.
The loyal Litvinenko even went as far as to expose an FSB plot to assassinate Berezovsky, an act that ended his career in the secret service and led to him being thrown in jail.
In 2000, Berezovsky fled Russia with his billions, moved to London and became Putin’s arch-foe.
Later that year, he helped Litvinenko escape to England, too, where he supported him and his family financially and sponsored his anti-Putin activities for the next six years.
It was Berezovsky, too, who eventually brought Lugovoi to England, inviting him to his lavish 60th birthday party at Blenheim Palace in January 2006. There, Lugovoi was seated next to Litvinenko.
Boris Berezovsky was once the most powerful oligarch in Russia. He controlled whole sectors of the Russian economy and the country's largest television channel, and he was also part of the government apparatus
That night there was nothing but caviar, good cheer and celebratory toasts, but soon afterward, so Lugovoi told me, Litvinenko had called him with a ‘business proposal’.
They would form a joint venture, backed by Berezovsky, to gather secret business information in Moscow that Litvinenko could sell to London clients.
Since this would involve Lugovoi collaborating with some of Putin’s most determined enemies abroad, I asked him if he had been concerned that this engagement could cause him problems with the authorities in Moscow.
He answered: ‘I had no such worries.’ Did this mean that he had informed Russian authorities about his participation in this shadowy venture? He just shrugged, hinting that this was the case. Since he was by now a member of the Russian parliament, I had to assume that whatever he had done had not harmed his prospects in Putin’s Russia.
As Lugovoi’s project with Litvinenko developed, much of the information he was asked to provide concerned Yukos, the immensely powerful Russian oil company that Putin was then in the process of expropriating from its owners.
Litvinenko (pictured) and Lugovoi formed a joint venture, backed by Berezovsky, to gather secret business information in Moscow that Litvinenko could sell to London clients
According to Lugovoi, he was initially asked to obtain relatively innocuous reports, such as one entitled, Main Characteristics Of Russian Organised Crime In 2003−2005. He duly acquired a copy from former FSB officers, and delivered it to Litvinenko, who paid him.
Litvinenko then gave him a list of other data to acquire, including government files on Russian tax officials. Litvinenko threatened that if he did not get this material, Lugovoi might have a ‘problem’ renewing his British visa. Sure enough, he later found his visa was indeed held up.
When Lugovoi then agreed to get this sensitive data, not only was his visa renewed, but $8,000 (£5,160) was wired to his bank account. This incident made him suspicious that Litvinenko, aside from working for Berezovsky, was also involved with British intelligence.
‘How else could he get my visa withdrawn — and reinstated?’ he asked rhetorically. How indeed.
So what of the crucial meeting at the Millennium Hotel? Lugovoi confirmed to me that the last time he saw Litvinenko was at 5pm on November 1, 2006, at the hotel bar, where they had discussed a planned meeting the following day.
But the next morning Litvinenko called to say he was sick and cancelled the meeting, so Lugovoi flew back to Moscow. He insisted he had no knowledge about how Litvinenko, or he himself, had been contaminated with polonium-210. Subsequently, he provided the same answer on a polygraph (lie detector) examination, conducted as part of a Russian TV documentary, and showed no signs of deception.
I next went to see Dmitry Kovtun, another former KGB agent, who had accompanied Lugovoi to London for his last two meetings with Litvinenko.
Like Lugovoi, Kovtun had been contaminated with polonium-210 — his seat on the BA flight back to Moscow had tested positive, as had Lugovoi’s. But Kovtun’s seat on the plane that had brought him to London was clean, strongly suggesting that he, too, must have been contaminated while in Britain.
Both Lugovoi and Kovtun claimed they were merely innocent bystanders who themselves had been contaminated by the same polonium-210 that killed Litvinenko. But how? That was the crucial question.
My next inquiries were with the office of the Russian prosecutor general in Moscow. I asked to see the evidence the British government had provided to support its extradition request for Lugovoi. I was referred to a unit called the National Investigative Committee and given access to the British files.
What immediately caught my attention was that they did not include the kind of documents that are fundamental to any murder case, such as the post-mortem report. There was a statement from a Scotland Yard police inspector that he was ‘familiar with the autopsy results’ and that Litvinenko had died of ‘Acute Radiation Syndrome’. But that was it.
Dmitry Kovtun (L), like Lugovoi (R), had been contaminated with polonium-210 - his seat on the BA flight back to Moscow had tested positive. But Kovtun's seat on the plane that had brought him to London was clean
There was no toxicology report to indicate when Litvinenko had been exposed to the radioactive nuclear component. There were no post-mortem slides of his lungs, digestive tract or body, which could have shown how the radioactive material got into his bloodstream — whether inhaled, swallowed or through an open cut.
Moreover, I learned, the Russians had been making their own inquiries into the case, but they had run into a brick wall when they asked for information from London.
The Russians wanted to know why Litvinenko had been wrongly diagnosed for more than three weeks and therefore not given the correct antidotes. But they said their repeated requests to speak to the doctors and see their notes were denied.
‘We have no trustworthy data on the cause of death of Litvinenko since the British authorities have refused to provide the necessary documents,’ I was told.
Neither did the British police report that accompanied the extradition papers cite any conventional scenes-of-crime evidence, such as eyewitness accounts, video surveillance records and fingerprints, other than the fact that Lugovoi had been with Litvinenko in the hotel bar.
Nor was there evidence that the alleged poisoning had even taken place that day. It could just as well have occurred early in the day, the week or the month at any of several other sites that also tested positive for radiation.
A scientist concluded that the traces of polonium-210 in Lugovoi's bedroom at the Millennium Hotel 'were at such a high level as to establish a link with the original polonium source material'
Instead, the case against Lugovoi was based entirely on a supposed ‘trail’ of polonium-210 radiation that had been detected many weeks after Litvinenko, Lugovoi, Kovtun and others had been in contact with it.
But the Russian investigators found the supposed trail inexplicably erratic in places. When they asked the British for a comprehensive list of all the sites tested, the British refused — leading the Russian investigators to suspect that the British might be truncating the trail to ‘fit their case’ that Lugovoi was the culprit.
The most impressive piece of evidence in the British report involved the high level of polonium-210 in Lugovoi’s bedroom at the Millennium Hotel. The actual level was not divulged, but an unidentified scientist had concluded that the traces ‘were at such a high level as to establish a link with the original polonium source material’.
In other words, Lugovoi had to be the original source.
Was the scientific data reliable? Presumably the scientist based his opinion by comparing the radiation level in Lugovoi’s bedroom with the other contaminated sites around London. But such evidence would work only if all the different sites had been pristine when the measurements were taken.
As it was, all the sites had been compromised by weeks of usage before they were tested. Therefore the differences in the radiation levels could have resulted from extraneous factors, such as vacuuming, washing or heating conditions.
The Russian investigators were also concerned that the discovered traces could have originated through cross-contamination ‘by outside parties’.
The Russian investigators concluded that there was not ‘a single piece of evidence’ that proved Lugovoi had to be the source.
As for the small quantity of polonium-210 involved, it could have been made in any country with an uninspected nuclear reactor — a list that in 2006 included Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea.
It could also have been stolen from stockpiles in the former Soviet Union or in the U.S., where, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there had been 14 incidents of missing industrial polonium-210 since 2004.
Consequently, we not only don’t know when it arrived in London, we don’t know where it came from. Nor do we know why it was smuggled into Britain.
One theory is that Putin's enemies in London arranged the death of Litvinenko so to cast suspicion on Putin. Even before Litvinenko was dead, websites controlled by Berezovsky had declared Putin the villain
This dearth of hard evidence has given rise to a profusion of theories. The most prevalent one — promoted by Berezovsky and his associates — is that Putin gave the orders to murder Litvinenko, and that Lugovoi carried them out.
A second theory is that Putin’s enemies in London arranged the death of Litvinenko so to cast suspicion on Putin. Even before Litvinenko was dead, websites controlled by Berezovsky and his allies had declared Putin the villain.
To add to the intrigue, in March this year Berezovsky himself was found hanged in the bathroom at the Ascot mansion of his former wife. A full inquest isn’t expected to be heard until next year, and will have to address suggestions that he, too, was murdered.
Other theories hold that Litvinenko was killed because of investigations he was making into organised crime in Spain involving the Mafia and the Kremlin.
My own assessment is that none of these theories holds true. For I believe that Alexander Litvinenko was not murdered at all — but rather that he was contaminated by an accidental leakage of polonium-210.
The highly radioactive material is not simply a lethal toxin, but is often used for more conventional purposes in modern espionage, since it can power miniaturised transmitters planted in an embassy ceiling, a diplomatic vehicle or on an article of clothing to track a person’s movements.
The Litvinenko family, who are now seeking a judicial review on Alexander's death, believe that Britain has struck a pragmatic deal with the Kremlin to hide the truth
Another use for polonium as part of an intelligence-gathering operation would be to provide it as ‘a sample’ — as bait to entrap someone suspected of buying nuclear material. And who would be behind either of these scenarios?
Litvinenko was involved with a number of intelligence services, including British intelligence, Russia’s FSB, America’s CIA (which rejected his offer to defect in 2000), and Italy’s SISMI (which was monitoring his phone conversations).
Did one of these security agencies — perhaps even the British — supply Litvinenko with the material as part of an attempted sting operation, or use it to power a device designed to track him?
All we know for certain is that Litvinenko and a number of his associates — whether wittingly or not — were in contact with a container of polonium-210. My conclusion is that at some stage along the line, it simply leaked with catastrophic consequences.
We will never know for sure where or when or how, because crucial evidence, such as the autopsy report, is locked away in the realms of British national-security secrecy.
The British Government has also gone to considerable lengths to conceal Litvinenko’s relationship with its intelligence services, as have their counterparts in other countries. The official inquest into his death may yet reveal further details, but don’t hold your breath.
Despite the request of the British coroner, Sir Robert Owen, that a full public inquiry should be held with a far broader investigative remit, the Government last month refused.
The Litvinenko family, who continue to blame the Russian government for his death, are now seeking a judicial review, delaying the start of the inquest yet further. They believe that Britain has struck a pragmatic deal with the Kremlin to hide the truth. In the words of one family friend: ‘There’s some sort of collusion behind the scenes with Her Majesty’s government and the Kremlin to obstruct justice.’
Could that be possible?
In cases of such sensitive political crimes, it is rare that conclusive evidence suddenly comes to light.
My belief is that the strange, radioactive death of Alexander Litvinenko is likely to earn its place in the annals of unsolved crime for ever.
This crucial libel trial in front of a crooked High Court judge Eady is important to the back story
Berezovsky, who has an estimated wealth of $1bn (£667m) according to Forbes magazine, told the court that Litvinenko was a dear and loyal friend who had saved his life "on more than one occasion" – chiefly by refusing to assassinate him in 1998 when Litvinenko was an agent of the FSB, the security bureau that descended from the KGB.
The grateful Berezovsky then became Litvinenko's benefactor, arranging his family's escape to the UK. Once in London he gave Litvinenko a house and thousands of pounds a month in "research grants".
To back up his case, Berezovsky enlisted a roster of high-profile witnesses including Litvinenko's widow, Marina.
After Litvinenko fell ill in 2006 after ingesting a radioactive isotope in a London sushi bar, Berezovsky told British journalists that his friend had been poisoned because he was an enemy of the then Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
The two-week trial was almost anarchic at times as officials from the Russian prosecutors' office repeatedly intervened despite not being party to proceedings. So obvious was their intention that when one of their mobile phones went off in court one day, Browne quipped: "That must be Mr Putin on the line."
At least three Russian prosecutors were in court each day to assist Vladimir Terluk, the man accused of giving the contentious interview about Berezovsky's bogus asylum claim. They whispered in Terluk's ear, passed him notes and smirked or laughed as the evidence was heard.
At one point they asked for the opportunity to cross-examine Berezovsky. "I thought that a step too far," said Eady in his judgment.
Terluk, a Kazakh who came to the UK to seek asylum in 1999, had been left to defend the libel action alone and without a lawyer after the Russian Television and Radio Company refused to take part.
If Litvinenko had defected to MI6 what was the point of the meeting with Luguvoy and were MI6 there too? _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Russian Oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s employee Alexander Litvinenko likely died from over exposure to Polonium in a botched smuggling operation. That is why traces of it were at Berezovsky’s house and on the planes Litvinenko was riding to and from Israel
Ryan Dawson
(ANC Report) Wed, Apr 29 | 2,273 19
This article originally appeared at ANC Report
As we all know Alexander Litvinenko, was poisoned by polonium, a rare radioactive substance, and it was all blamed on Putin of Russia because Litvinenko was a Putin critic. This was the quick line in mass media and it was on all the typical war propaganda channels.
There are many things wrong with the “Putin did it” story. For one there is no motive, even with Litvinenko being a critic of Russia, he was no threat whatsoever to Putin. The man worked with Chechen terrorists and the Israeli-Russian oligarchs. But just assuming that there was a sufficient motive to kill him, think about this: Why would Russia use a very rare, very expensive, and easily traceable radioactive substance to kill him instead of some cheap poison or just shooting him? Why risk smuggling radioactive material into the UK which is an act of war?
But that is exactly what the UK/US media would have you believe. They want to say that Putin had someone sneak into the UK with polonium and poison Litvinenko with it. It just isn’t plausible. It’s actually absurd.
Alexander Litvinenko who was formerly FSB fled to the UK to avoid court prosecution in Russia, worked for a shady Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky. Boris Berezovsky just so happens to be the Israeli-Russian oligarch who lives in London after fleeing the Russian judicial system for a multitude of crimes too long to list. He was on Interpol’s most wanted list. Here is the grand prize. After the US and UK press branded Putin with the poisoning despite there being Zero evidence, (something the US is very well known for now) investigators were tracking down the traces of polonium in the UK. They detected traces of Polonium at Berezovsky’s office and residence! Now I do not know about you, but in my place of work, and certainly in my house, I do not have rare radioactive substances. It is not something you just get at the market or pick up by accident walking through the park.
No experienced mob boss like Berezovsky would be dumb enough to murder an underling in such a manner either. Therefore his death was an accident. It was mostly likely it was a botched smuggling operation. Why was he moving such a dangerous substance? Did he need fast cash? Were they planning to create a dirty bomb? Such a “smoky bomb” would turn the Polonium into powder and kill anyone who ingested it.
Traces of Polonium were found on the planes that Litvinenko had been on. So I think we can deduce what happened. He was a mule. The questions remain, why did he have it?, Where did he get it? What was he going to do with it? Why was it in the offices of Berezovsky and Erinsys Ltd (Britain’s Blackwater)?
The” Putin did it” smear case has never made sense. First of all, the amount of polonium 210 in play would have cost millions of dollars. That amount is too expensive to purchase and too large to go unnoticed if it were stolen. The only way to obtain such a quantity would be on a well organized black market that had a connection to a nuclear reactor. It would certainly help organized crime if the nuclear powered supplier they received the Polonium from was not subjected to international inspections or part of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Such a country, (Foreign country A) which denied they even built nuclear weapons for decades, would certainly also deny selling their Polonium byproduct as well.
Is it possible to hide that from the press? Yes. The media would ignore this for the same reason the media ignores them stealing nuclear secrets and building hundreds of nuclear weapons in Dimona, then throwing whistle blowers who took pictures of their warheads, in jail.
Litvinenko was in Israel, where he met Leonid Nevzlin the CEO of Yukos shortly before he died. If you wanted to buy/steal radioactive material that would be the place. What was he negotiating with Nevzlin? We learned Alexander had been an informant in a case that led to the arrest of nine Georgina and Russian Mobsters in Spain, including Alexander Gofstein a lawyer for Yukos who apparently was laundering money.
The downfall began when Georgina Mob Boss Zakhar Kalashov was arrested in May 2006. The scam was similar to what the old Five Families of New York had done, when guys like Meyer Lansky took profits from illegal gambling businesses and funneled them into buying up real estate in Florida. In the European case, the mob was taking illegal funds and buying up real estate in Spain as well as making investments into legitimate businesses.
Litivnenko’s associates, Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi who both had met with him the day of the poisoning were also both hospitalized. They left traced on Polonium in Hamburg as they had taken the trip to Germany before meeting Litvinenko. It appears all three were involved in a smuggling operation, but for who?
Short answer: Russian Oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s employee Alexander Litvinenko died from over exposure to Polonium in a botched smuggling operation. That is why traces of it were at Boris’s house and on the planes Litvinenko was riding to and from Israel. The smear on Putin/Russia using a highly traceable 10 million dollar poison to kill a critic is about as plausible and rational as saying we have “British Intelligence” about Niger…. This transparent bogus lie was a quick and shamelessly sloppy explanation to cover up how and why this man in the UK had a radioactive poison in his body. Polonium only has a half life of 138 days.
Litvinenko had been in Israel to visit Yukos’s CEO, just shortly before he died. And it’s an open secret that Israel has nuclear weapons, the only place without nuclear safeguard or inspections. Traces of polonium were also on the British Airway planes that Litvinenko took to and from Israel. So it they would have the means, location, and the timing fits, but let’s just blame, Putin “The New Hitler” as Neocons have dubbed him?
Why the fuss about a conspiracy claiming that Putin put Litvinenko on a hitlist and poisoned him? Well as wacky as that story is, it was probably the best they could come up with on short notice. Boris knew once the police found out how Litvinenko died that there would be a lot of explaining to do. He also knew that if the investigation went forward that they could find more of this Polonium on his properties. So they just claimed the KGB was trying to kill them all.
Some History
This is not the first time that Berezovsky tried to pin a murder on someone else and claim that all the damning evidence pointing to him was a frame. There are the notorious cases (in Russia) of Ivan Litskevich and Vlad Listyev.
Ivan Listkevich was the general director of the Omsk oil Refinery easily the best refinery in Russia. Abramovich and Berezovsky planned to take over the refinery and make it part of Berezovsky’s Sibnef (which it now is). Listkevich resisted. Ivan had outside investments from LUKoil (10% of the stock) and CS First Boston. So in no way was he threatened to sink. Omsk was in the best location, had the latest equipment, and was well positioned to continue to soar. They serviced the biggest oil producers in Russia. Naturally Ivan did not want to be swallowed by Sibnef. August 19, 1995 Ivan was found drowned in the Irtysh River. I doubt he went there to swim. Five days later Sibnef (Gazprom) took over. August 24th 1995, using his good buddy Yeltson, Berezovsky got a Presidential Decree №872, to order a transfer of all the state’s share in Omsk as well as 4 other companies to Sibnef. Then in 1996 Boris and Roman privatized Sibnef through a series of Loans-for-Shares’ auctions which were a complete scam run through front companies and offshore banks. Yeltsin approved of it.
The case may leave doubts in the mind until one learns about the murder of Vlad Listyev. In 1994 Boris attacked one of his rivals over control of a media outlet. Part of the attack was broadcast all over TV and came to be known as “faces in the snow” as Boris’s rival’s bodyguard were forced at gun point to lie face down in the snow. Shortly after a 90mph high speed chase and attacking rival Gusinsky’s MOST guards and pinning Gusinsky in his own building, Berezovsky would take control of ORT (channel 1) through an illegal non-public “auction” and gain a near media monopoly.
For details on that I recommend reading “God Father of the Kremlin” if you can still find it. It was written by the senior editor of Forbes in Russian who holds a Ph.D in Russian history Paul Klebnikov. For the record Paul Klebnikov was killed after publishing his book on the Oligarchs, particularly on Boris, who is on the cover. He was shot four times in Moscow while leaving work and then died in the hospital after getting stuck on an elevator.
After the Gusinsky event, Boris had another problem. Vladislav Listyev. Listyev was probably the most popular talk show host in Russia and a TV producer. He was a business partner with Boris but the problem was he was not crooked. As general director of ORT he decided to fix a multi-million dollar leak in the company and indirect way of Boris paying people off in the Mob to do dirty work, as well as paying himself by spending money for ads in other companies owned where he also ran the advertising sales. He had an offer from Sergei Lisovsky to buy up the sector. Negotiations never went through and Vlad had a different idea.
On Feb 20th 1995 Vlad announced that he would break the monopoly of Boris and Sergei. He called for a moratorium on ORT advertising until they could work out ethical standards. As you can imagine that did not make Boris or the rest of the mob happy. Eight days later Boris personally met with “Nikolai” a mafia boss, and handed him a hundred thousand dollars in cash. This was witnessed by two police officers who were monitoring the Mob. Prior to that Boris’s lacky Badri offered money to a different gangster but that man was arrested before he could do what was asked of him and he confessed this in jail. On March 1st the day after Berezovsky paid a second Mob Boss, Vlad Listyev was shot in the back at the entrance of his home.
Guilty as sin, with a confession against Badri as well as being personally witnessed by two police, offering another mob boss money, Boris was desperate. He was inches away from being arrested. Boris’s TV network was cut out of government subsidies after the police raided it and it was subject to bankruptcy. Fellow Media giant and friend Ruppert Murdoch promised to invest in the network and bail him out. How nice. And we all know where Murdoch stands. This relationship might also explain why Fox News and Sky News in the UK were so blatantly cheerleading the “Putin killed Litvinenko” conspiracy story.
But here is the real kicker. It is just as outrageous and far fetched as the Litvinenko poisoning. Boris concocted a story for Yeltsin which was recorded on video tape produced by Irina Lesnevskaya a producer at ORT and a friend of Yeltsin’s wife. The tape claimed that it was all a big conspiracy against Berezovsky and that the real culprit (who had no motive other than to frame Boris [apparently able to hire a gun to kill Vlad but not Boris?]) was none other than bitter rival Gusinsky of Most Bank who Boris had already tried to kill once.
Yeltsin was paranoid of Gusinsky’s political ambitions and Boris knew this. Boris also blamed X-KGB and said Vlad was killed by the MOST group, and not the mob he was witnessed meeting with a week after Vlad was going to break his monopoly. (Sounds like “Iraq moved the nonexistent WMDs to Syria just to make the US look bad.” give me a break) Boris claimed to be set up because he was loyal to Yeltsin as was his new media outlet.
Yeltsin ever a partner in cover ups, not to mention a drunk and a thief, got Boris out of trouble once again by firing the lead investigators in the case which intimidated others to drop it. There was a huge public outcry. A TV personality had been killed. ORT created a new company called ORT advertising with a monopoly to sell ads on commission no less, and the boss-man chosen was none other than Sergei Lisovsky. Wow how utterly shameless.
If you can speak Russian or if you can find an English copy of the Boris/Lesnevskaya tape transcript sent to Yeltsin, it’s going to make you very angry. It is about as plausible as saying Putin risked an act of war with the UK to kill a critic who worked for both a criminal as well as terrorist.
Who Done It?
So we know what didn’t happen. But there still remains a “who done it.” The quickest way to get to the bottom of this is to see who is lying the most and loudest, because that is usually who has the most to hide.
Remember Anna Politkovskaya? She was killed on Putin’s birthday and the alternative press and the ‘mindlessly accepting any conspiracy’ types who fell for it, tried to use that circumstantial “evidence” to blame the murder on Putin.
These are the same types that claim Russia bombed its own apartment buildings to start a war with Chechnya omitting the fact that the apartment bombing took place five months after the war has already started, and the “sources” trying to blame the FSB were none other than Boris’s lacky Litvinenko and well known plagiarist David Satter, who wrote for the PNAC co-founders’ Weekly Standard, which gave the world all the bogus lies about Iraq’s WMD and connection to the September 11th attacks. Robert Kagan, the paper’s cofounder with William Kristol, wrote n op-ed in the Washington Times calling “Speaking of Iraq” which pushes every erroneous prewar scare tactic there was. His wife Victoria Nuland is the same woman who was recorded on the phone saying “F” the EU and openly talking about who would be a good replacement Prime Minister in Ukraine. She chose Arseniy Yatseniuk, who she called “Yatz” and he did become the prime minister of Ukraine a month later after the coup. Everything out of this factions mouth has been blindly anti-Russian.
There is a huge difference between conspiracy and kookpiracy. Getting away from the outlandish unsubstantiated claims about Anna’s death, let’s uncover something factual. Anna Politkovskaya was the journalist who had published three different articles on how SOMEONE was testing polonium on Chechen children. Gee! Where have we seen THAT scenario before? Anna’s articles were published in the Novaya Gazeta in 2006 and she was killed October of that same year.
The Washington Post then makes this clever claim:
“
“Leonid Nevzlin, a former Yukos oil company shareholder and Russian exile currently living in Israel, told the Associated Press in late November that Litvinenko had given him a document related to a dossier on criminal charges made by Russian prosecutors against people connected to Yukos. Nevzlin, who is charged by Russian prosecutors with having organized killings, fraud and tax evasion, claimed Litvinenko’s inquiries may have provided a motive for his poisoning.”
”
Notice who else is in that Washington Post article (Scaramella) and who was planting the ideas that Putin had killed both Litvinenko and Anna. How crazy is that to use polonium to murder someone…Scaramella is a rotten one. After Anna’s layer Stanislav Markelov was murdered in 2009 followed by the murder of one of her key informants in Chechnya Natalia Estemirova the same year, there was a retrial in Anna’s case which went to the Supreme Court. Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov stirred up a public disgust when he said about Anna’s informant Natalia Estemirova on Radio Liberty “She was a woman…who had never possessed any honor, dignity or conscience.”
The prosecution cornered Dmitry Pavliutchenkov a former policeman who in turn confessed Lom-Ali Gaitukayev was who negotiated the contract killing and behind him he suspected Boris Berezovsky. Dmitry was sentenced to 11 years in jail. Five men were found guilty in her murder. Three were the Chechen brothers who had been acquitted in the first trial and they went to prison. Rustam Makhmudov and Lom-Ali Gaitukayev got life sentences in 2014. Berevsovsky had died the year before in March of 2013.
Dmitry Kovtun, one of the two Russians accused of killing Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive poison in London eight years ago, may be about to reverse his 11th-hour decision to give evidence to the inquiry at the Royal Courts of Justice .
Four months almost to the day after throwing the inquiry timetable into disarray by suddenly communicating through intermediaries that he wanted to testify, Kovtun created havoc all over again by sending word that he might not be prepared to give evidence after all.
The Russian government, which had declined an invitation to take part in the inquiry, also effectively withdrew even the limited cooperation it had given in the early stages of the Metropolitan Police’s investigation.
James C wrote:
They were discussing this on Radio 2 on Jeremy Vine's show, Monday lunchtime. I was absolutely astounded however when Jeremy Vine actually read out one persons email which said.
"Replace Putin with Bush
Apartment blocks with the Twin Towers
Chechnya for Iraq
and what have you got.....?"
Either Jeremy Vine hadn't read the email properly or he read it out because he agreed with it in someway.
_________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
January 21, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "Sputnik" - So now Russian President is a cold-blooded assassin, as well as Europe’s “new Hitler”, the saboteur of civilian airliners, sponsor of drug abuse in sports and the friend of Middle East butcher-dictators.
Can the list of demonic epithets for the Russian leader get any longer? Just when you think it couldn’t, the good old British master of dirty tricks pulls out the “evil assassin” card.
Putin is fingered for ordering the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former member of Russia’s security service FSB.
The British so-called public inquiry published this week only said Putin “probably” ordered the killing of Litvinenko in London nearly 10 years ago. But the intended innuendo implanted in the public mind is plain: Putin is an assassin.
As the Russian Foreign Ministry said in derisory response to the British report, it is all so predictable. The politicization of a criminal matter is so flagrantly transparent, it is almost cringe-making in its clumsiness.
The inquiry was ordered by the British government in October 2014, and is anything but “public”. It is based on secret evidence presented behind closed doors by anonymous British intelligence figures.
No verifiable proof worthy of a proper legal court is presented. It is based entirely on “circumstantial”, that is subjective, inference by a former British judge sitting in private, but who is then given ample media exposure to broadcast his “findings”. To call this a “judicial ruling” is a farce and an insult to the public’s intelligence.
Yet following the announcement of the inquiry’s “conclusions”, the British government immediately censured Russia over “a blatant and unacceptable breach of international law”. This is not only typical British arrogance, it is a dangerous, reckless misuse of a country’s dubious legal procedures to project an international political jurisdiction.
There is plenty of hard evidence for Russia or any other state to accuse the British prime minister of war crimes given his country’s illegal interference in Libya and Syria. But what gives Britain the right to accuse Russia’s head of state of murder, especially based on such flimsy “circumstantial” evidence? Britain’s disrespect for international norms in this regard is a new low in dirty tricks.
The corny Cold War stereotypes of “ex-KGB spies seeking revenge” is the first giveaway that this is a “psyops job”, in addition to the scripted political reaction by the British government. This latest smear fits consistently with the long-running running Western-led propaganda vendetta against Vladimir Putin.
As alluded to above, the smears include Putin wanting to militarily over-run Europe to revive the Soviet Empire, to the shooting down of the Malaysian MH17 airliner over eastern Ukraine in July 2014 with 298 dead, to Russia’s air force support for Syrian President Bashar Assad. Even though the latter instance is legitimate aid to an allied country which is actually being attacked by Western-backed terrorist mercenaries for regime change.
Of the many absurdities in the British report on the death of Litvinenko, perhaps the main one is the alleged use of radioactive Polonium as a lethal poison. Two named former FSB agents are accused in the British report of having tipped the toxin into Litvinenko’s pot of tea during a private meeting at a posh London hotel. How very English. Death by a cup of tea!
The meeting did take place in November 2006. Three weeks later, Litvinenko died in a London hospital from internal organ failure apparently due to poisoning from the Polonium.
But if, as the British claim, it was the work of cold-blooded, professional Russian assassins under orders from their bosses in the Kremlin the fatal contradiction in this claim is that the apparent murder was carried out with extraordinary amateurishness.
Traces of radioactive polonium were allegedly found in the London hotels where the accused Russian men stayed and even the planes they travelled on. If professional assassins were to use radioactive poison they would keep the lethal dose in a lead capsule to prevent emission of radioactivity. Our putative Russian assassins in London must have been throwing the deadly substance around themselves like aftershave, if we are to believe the findings of the British judge.
On the contrary, what careless radioactive traces in hotels, planes and elsewhere strongly suggest is that someone was laying an incriminating path to frame up the Russian men. And even at that we don’t really know if traces of radioactivity were actually found because, as noted the un-public nature of the British inquiry was based entirely on secret, unverifiable “evidence”.
This is the same kind of legal “standard” that the West uses to accuse Russian warplanes of bombing hospitals in Syria or Russian tanks rolling across Ukraine – with no verifiable evidence. It’s all down to politicized assertion and bombast.
Litvinenko defected from Russia to Britain in 2000 after he was sacked from the Russian FSB for unprofessional misconduct. He became a British citizen and worked for Britain’s state intelligence MI6. It sounds as if Litvinenko was an expedient opportunist, making nice money as an anti-Putin media writer, from which he was able to buy a fashionable house in London.
He was a valuable asset to the British owing to the very public allegations he made and they were able to broadcast for smearing Putin and other Russian government officials with corruption claims. As a former “Kremlin spy”, the propaganda value that the British state exploited through Litvinenko was considerable.
But then came an even more valuable propaganda opportunity for the British – Litvinenko’s death.
Who is to say that his British handlers did not bump off the Russian “former spy” with their own supply of radioactive polonium? And given Litvinenko’s personal umbrage with the Russian government for being sacked from the FSB, he could be relied on by the British to give a plausible-sounding death bed statement imputing Putin for his demise.
The putative scenario of Litvinenko’s alleged assassination by Russian agents under the direction of the Kremlin was like an investment for the British. The propaganda dividends have paid out since his death in 2006 with recurring media stories impugning Vladimir Putin.
The timing of the latest big dividend – actually openly accusing Putin of ordering assassination – is another cause for suspicion that the British “public inquiry” is just the latest twist in a long-running smear campaign.
British media are calling for more sanctions to be imposed on the Russian government and for extradition warrants to be issued. However, British officials are quoted as saying that they are constrained because of the “sensitive timing” in relation to the peace talks due to take place in Geneva next week over Syria.
“We have other fish to fry with the Russians,” said one official in explaining why the British authorities may not take more legal action against Moscow over the Litvinenko case.
The “other fish to fry” is a veiled reference to extracting concessions from Russia over Syria where the British objective is regime change against President Assad.
This has all the hallmarks of a time-honored British psychological operation. Pile up the smears to then undermine the moral authority of your opponent in order that concessions can be extracted.
The brother of former Russian FSB secret service agent Aleksandr Litvinenko says the UK government had more motivation to kill him than Russia did, despite a British public inquiry which concluded that President Putin “probably” approved the assassination.
Maksim Litvinenko, Aleksandr’s younger brother who lives in Rimini, Italy, responded to the Thursday report by saying it was “ridiculous” to blame the Kremlin for the murder of his brother, stating that he believes British security services had more of a motive to carry out the assassination.
“My father and I are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It’s all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government,” Litvinenko told the Mirror, adding that such reasoning is the only explanation as to why the inquiry was launched 10 years after his brother’s death.
He called the British report a “smear” on Putin, and stressed that rumors claiming his brother was an enemy of the state are false. He added that Aleksandr had planned to return to Russia, and had even told friends about the move.
Litvinenko went on to downplay his brother’s alleged role as a spy, working for either Russia or MI6, adding that the Western media is to blame for such characterization.
“The Russians had no reason to want Alexander dead,” he said. “My brother was not a spy, he was more like a policeman…he was in the FSB [Russian Federal Security Service] but he worked against organized crime, murders, arms trafficking, stuff like that.”
Suspect links death to MI6
Andrey Lugovoy, one of the accused for his alleged role in the death of Litvinenko, said the British intelligence tried to recruit him before Litvinenko’s death.
Andrey Lugovoy
Andrey Lugovoy
On Thursday, an inquiry report said Lugovoy, along with his former colleague Dmitry Kovtun, poisoned Litvinenko with polonium-210.
Participating in the ‘Evening with Vladimir Solovyov’ show on the Rossiya 1 TV channel, Lugovoy said he was likely exposed to polonium simultaneously with Litvinenko.
Lugovoy also drew a connection between the death of Litvinenko and the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).
“Litvinenko died in November 2006. In March-April, I was openly offered cooperation [by MI6] and in order to motivate me somehow, I was denied a visa. That was in May 2006. And after I called Litvinenko – I’ve said this multiple times – I was granted a visa all of a sudden. I have always connected these two events,” Lugovoy recalled.
He stressed that prior to May 2006, he had always received British visas without any problems. “They [UK] always gave me visas, and did it with great pleasure before May 2006, when I was denied a visa after the British intelligence MI6 tried recruiting me.”
He does not plan to go to court to clear his name.
“I don’t intend to do that, because if I go into that, it means I will attach importance to what the British are doing, and they are trying to do everything so that we pay more attention to it [the UK inquiry], so that we react to it somehow,” he said.
He also does not want to leave Russia. “I have not left Russia for a long time now and I do not plan to do it.”
‘London relied on forged evidence’
Dmitry Kovtun
Dmitry Kovtun
The inquiry report on the Litvinenko affair is based on forged evidence, said Kovtun, one of the two Russians suspected of poisoning Litvinenko.
“There had been no doubts Judge Robert Owen would arrive at such conclusions. These rely on forged evidence and the open hearings exposed that. There were no doubts that when the proceedings continue behind closed doors, forged evidence will be used again,” he said.
Kovtun described the pieces of evidence presented to the inquiry as “insane and easily refutable.”
The witness was giving conflicting testimonies all the time. The case is extremely politicized, he remarked. “Yet I’d hoped for the common sense and courage of Judge Owen. May this decision remain on his conscience,” Kovtun said.
Report not a verdict: Kremlin
The Kremlin does not perceive as verdict any part of the results of investigation into the death of Litvinenko, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.
“Why am I saying ‘quasi-investigation’ and why can’t we perceive that as an investigation?” Peskov told journalists. “Because the talk is about some judgments based on probability, on the use of words ‘possibly’, ‘probably’.”
“Such terminology is not allowed in Russian judicial practice; nor is it allowed in court practices of other countries, and it certainly can’t be perceived by us as a verdict in any part [of the investigation’s results],” he said.
According to Peskov, the results of the investigation may be ironically “referred to subtle British humor.”
‘Probe biased from the very start’
The inquiry into the case of Litvinenko was conducted in a biased manner from the very beginning, a British political scientist and editor told TASS.
No courts in Britain or anywhere in the world would pass guilty verdicts based on a ‘probability’ of guilt, said Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos, the editor-in-chief of Politics First magazine said.
Britain WANTED Alexander Litvinenko dead NOT the Kremlin says murdered former KBG agent's brother
19:40, 21 JAN 2016 UPDATED 19:58, 21 JAN 2016 BY HANNAH ROBERTS
In a bizarre outburst the younger brother of murdered agent Litvinenko says Russia is not to blame but the UK could be
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britain-wanted-alexander-litvinen ko-dead-7222278
The younger sibling of murdered spy Alexander Litvinenko says his brother was not killed by Russian spies and instead blames UK security services that wanted him dead.
And Maxim Litvinenko has rejected the findings of the inquiry into his brother's death, saying that to blame the Kremlin is 'ridiculous.'
The inquiry found that President Putin 'probably' authorised the murder by Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, who were under the direction of Moscow's FSB intelligence service , when they poisoned the 43-year-old with radioactive polonium 210 at London's Millennium Hotel.
But Maxim Litvinenko, Alexander's younger brother, claimed the report was an obvious attempt to 'put pressure on Russia' and that British secret services had more reason to want Litvinenko dead than Putin.
EPAAleksandr (R) and 24-year-old Maxim LitvinenkoBrothers: Alexander with this younger brother Maxim
Read more: Alexander Litvinenko inquiry: The other Putin critics who have been assassinated
Maxim, a chef by trade who lives in Rimini, Italy, said: "I don't believe for a second that the Russian authorities were involved.
"The sentence is a set-up to provide more bad publicity against the Russian government.
"The Russians had no reason to want Alexander dead, he claimed. 'My brother was not a spy, he was more like a policeman.
"He was in the FSB but he worked against organised crime, murders, arms trafficking, stuff like that.
Alexander Litvinenko InquiryDead: each of these opponents to the Russian regime have lost their lives in suspicious circumstances
"He did not know any state secrets or go on any special missions . It is the Western media that have called him a spy."
His relations with Russia were so stable that Alexander planned to return, his brother claimed, because he didn't have enough work in London.
Read more: Alexander Litvinenko inquiry: Friend of murdered spy sent T-shirt threatening him with polonium poisoning
"He had already started to get in touch with old friends and would have gone back in due course," he added.
"My father and I are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It's all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government.
"Why else would the court be called to hold this inquiry only after 10 years?'
PAMarina Litvinenko, the wife of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, speaks to the media outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London, where the findings of the inquiry into his death were revealed.Answers: Litvinenko's wife Marina addresses the media outside the Royal Courts of Justice
"The West appear to be collaborating with Russia in Syria but it's not real-there's still sanctions."
He claimed that British authorities had not collaborated with Russian investigators on his brother's case and cast doubt on whether polonium was really the murder weapon saying he believes it could have been planted to frame the Russians.
Read more: Litvinenko inquiry: Theresa May blasts Russia for "blatant breach of international law" as she vows new crackdown
He said: "I believe he could have been killed by another poison maybe thallium, which killed him slowly and the polonium was planted afterwards.
MET PoliceEvidence: a diagram of the Alexander Litvinenko poisoned teapot
"We have always asked for his body to be exhumed so that we can verify the presence of polonium in the body but we have been ignored.
"Now after ten years any trace would have disappeared anyway so we will never know. "
He also claimed that several other deaths, including the suicide of Boris Berezovsky, the dissident who had initially supported Litvinenko financially, and the murder of the owner of a nightclub where traces of polonium were found, could be linked to his brother's death.
Dan KitwoodAnswers: Marina Litvinenko wife of dead agent Alexander speaks to reporters outside The High Court
Maxim, a chef by training, initially blamed the Russian regime for his brother's murder. But his views have now radically altered.
In 2008 and 2009 the Litvinenko family had a restaurant in Rimini, a resort on Italy's Adriatic coast which is popular with Russians, that was closed down, forcing the family into financial difficulties.
But as his views altered his fortunes seem to have improved.
Read more: Alexander Litvinenko inquiry: How ex-spy was killed 'on Putin's orders' and why no-one is facing justice
The father-of-two says he now works between Russia and Rimini, and is launching a property company in Italy targeting foreigners, especially Russians.
He has denied accepting any money from the Russian state.
Well, Mario Scaramella met with Litvinenko during the meal when Litvinenko was poisoned. Scaramella didn’t eat or drink a thing during the lunch, and then himself came down with a mild case of polonium poisoning.
La Republica (one of Italy’s largest newspapers) wrote in 2006 (English translation) that Scaramella was a bad guy who may have worked with the CIA:
Mario Scaramella is suspected of arms trafficking. Earlier this year, the public prosecutor of Naples has written for this offense to the docket and, soon after, had to stop the investigation. [He was convicted in Italy for selling arms (original Italian).]
On January 21, 2015, Sir Robert Michael Owen, a High Court judge on the verge of retirement, in his inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko made the following statement.[1] “I am sure that Mr Litvinenko did not ingest the polonium 210 either by accident or to commit suicide. I am sure, rather, that he was deliberately poisoned by others. I am sure that Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun placed the polonium 210 in the teapot at the Pine Bar on 1 November 2006. I am also sure they did this with the intention of poisoning Mr Litvinenko. I am sure that the two men had made an earlier attempt to poison Mr Litvinenko, also using polonium 210, at the Erinys meeting on 16 October 2006. I am sure that Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun knew that they were using a deadly poison…. I am sure that Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun were acting on behalf of others when they poisoned Mr Litvinenko. When Mr Lugovoy poisoned Mr Litvinenko, it is probable that he did so under the direction of the FSB…. The FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin.”[2]
There is a lot of certainty and some probability in these words from the mouth of someone about to be put out to grass. Unfortunately they have not been fully masticated, or digested, before ending up in a dollop for the mainstream dung-flies to buzz around and feed on. Nevertheless he has done his job for the establishment. Without the means to analyze this absolute certainty and almost certain probability, it would be interesting to learn on what evidence the statement was based. Unfortunately it is a statement that has not been tested by a jury, just a weary old establishment judge paying homage to his masters for a lifetime of luxury. There are a lot of unanswered questions in this case. That is a massive problem for everyone now living in the United Kingdom since the introduction of new iron Acts, Acts which you might be forgiven for thinking were deliberately created for the purpose of preventing a proper inquest.
If you live in the UK, you might not have noticed how your legal rights are being eroded without challenge from your elected representatives. This inquiry is just one aspect of this erosion. The findings of the Litvinenko Inquiry may not have even have got close to the truth. And the public may never even learn the cause of Litvinenko’s death — murder, accident or some other cause. Sir Robert Owen is the second ‘coroner’ to be involved in the case. The first coroner, Andrew Reid, had failed to reach any conclusion after five years of consideration as to the cause of death. That is the purpose of an inquest — to establish cause of death. Reid focused almost exclusively on finding proof of Russian involvement in Litvinenko’s death. He clearly found none. But that was not his job anyway. It is not the purpose of an inquest to establish guilt, and taxpayers’ money was squandered in this meaningless pursuit. William Dunkerley, a business analyst who has been closely following the case says that when eventually Reid called for disclosure of MI5/MI6 documents related to the death, a scandal broke that Reid had employed his wife some years earlier, and he was taken off the case. Sir Robert Owen took over and announced that the secret documents would remain secret.[3] If they were integral to the inquest, MI5/MI6 documents should have been called for from the beginning.
To ensure these documents, and other revealing evidence from our secret services, did remain secret the inquest was abandoned and an inquiry was set up purportedly to establish guilt. What is most surprising about the findings of this deep-rooted establishment judge is that little mention is made about the shady oligarchs and mafia-type people Litvinenko associated with and did business with, including the late Boris Berezovsky. Their past has hardly been touched on by the hovering buzz-flies of the Fifth Estate in recent years. Instead Owen gives a glowing report on what good men Litvinenko and Berezovsky, were, based largely on testimony from Litvinenko’s wife Marina. No bias there then! Despite neither Berezovsky nor Litvinenko being reliable witnesses, their evidence has been used to reach a conclusion.
Other interested parties, Russia and the free press for example, have picked up on the crimes of these two men. Less than twelve months ago Ryan Dawson wrote, in an article for Russia Insider: “Alexander Litvinenko who was formerly FSB fled to the UK to avoid court prosecution in Russia, worked for a shady Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky. Boris Berezovsky just so happens to be the Israeli-Russian oligarch who lives in London after fleeing the Russian judicial system for a multitude of crimes too long to list. He was on Interpol’s most wanted list. Here is the grand prize.” Dawson questions the UK narrative and scratches the surface of the colorful pasts of Berezhovsky and Litvinenko. According to Dawson, the men were gangsters who, through shady oil deals and other contracts, were closely linked to the murders of more than one person. Litvinenko was apparently involved, along with others, in many suspicious deals in which ordinary decent people do not get involved. It is not surprising that he had created so many enemies. He was, like his boss Berezovsky, an uncompromising critic of Vladimir Putin.
6874976758_a18e94662c_b
On his deathbed, Alexander Litvinenko accused the Italian academic, Mario Scaramella, of poisoning him. Scaramella is a self-acclaimed expert in nuclear waste and worldwide locations of nuclear waste, and another man with a dark past. Yet his name has been left out of the equation by the press for long years while the blame-Putin diatribe has been milked till the cows come home. The inquiry mentions that Litvinenko accused Scaramella of his murder in the first statement he made regarding his illness, but Sir Robert concludes that Litvinenko’s confidence in being trained as an agent to recognize who his killer was let him down at his death. The inquiry makes it clear that Litvinenko had long been critical of Putin, citing an open letter from 1998 but does not conclude that his judgement in allegedly accusing Putin was impaired. It was only impaired with the very clear and repeated accusation against Mario Scaramella. Mr Scaramella was hospitalized in London after testing positive for polonium 210.[4] He met Litvinenko before Lugovoy and Kovtun on the same day. That is not to say that Scaramella was involved in Litvinenko’s death. That is why there should be an inquest.
Scaramella was a witness at the inquiry, but he appears to have some ties with Scotland Yard and may well have been offered immunity from prosecution to testify. He came willingly to London. Lugovoy was prepared to give evidence up until the point when the inquest was converted into an inquiry. Perhaps someone had whispered the words Hutton and whitewash in his ear. Whatever the conclusions of an inquiry, the truth is not going to get out easily. Its purpose is to obfuscate the truth, and if Owen gets away with it, he will have done a good job.
Despite there being no inquest ruling on whether Litvinenko was murdered, or any other verdict come to that, everybody in the west knows that he was killed on Putin’s orders, and Judge Robert Michael Owen has conveniently confirmed that meme — but not before a jury. For years the mainstream media put out blanket coverage of this supposed fact, to indoctrinate those who never question what our media tell us. That has continued right up to this week with a Guardian article by Luke Harding. According to The eXile, Luke Harding is a journalist with an indelible record for plagiarism.[5] Harding specializes in establishment propaganda, which stretches from the denigration of Julian Assange to all things anti-Russian or anti-Putin. He is the only known journalist to have been expelled from Russia and is still churning out the same tired old establishment pap.[6] The purpose is obviously to prepare the public for the untested conclusions of Owen’s whitewash.
The big problem for UK citizens today stems from the changes in law. When Tony Blair called for an inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, rather than an inquest, it was illegal. Instead Lord Hutton, who was just about to be put out to grass, presided over this whitewash, and there has never been an inquest into Dr Kelly’s death. Now, with the Inquiries Act 2005, an inquiry can legally replace an inquest. A High Court judge, who may not be trained in coronial law, can preside over such an inquest without a jury. This has happened in other high-profile cases like inquests into the deaths of Dodi Al Fayed, Princess Diana, and Jean Charles de Menezes. It gives a High Court judge all the powers of a coroner without necessarily having the conclusion tested. This is disturbing because conclusions like “Putin did it” do not make for sound justice — especially when that is the starting point of the inquiry.
Sir Robert Owen has given 30 days for interested parties to call for an inquest, but he believes the inquiry has covered everything an inquest would cover. This is clearly not true. An inquest is an open court, and in his inquiry there was no jury to question Sir Robert’s findings. A presumption of Putin’s guilt was the foundation upon which the inquiry was built. This is the wrong way round for justice to be seen to be done. There should be no presumption of guilt before a judge presides. In Owen’s report it says “Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovun, both of whom are wanted by the British Authorities for the murder of Mr Litvinenko, declined my invitation to give evidence to the Inquiry.”(2.17) In this one sentence, the fallibility of Owen’s inquiry is blatantly demonstrated. The public has been deprived of one of its legal safety nets: a coroner’s inquest. This basic tenet has been in existence in UK law for centuries. Because there has been no inquest, there can be no presumption that Litvinenko was murdered. Yet here is a High Court judge telling us Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovun are wanted for murder. If there had been an inquest, it would almost certainly have returned an ‘open verdict,’ as it did in the death of arch-criminal Berezovsky, Litvinenko’s friend and employer.
2. FSB: Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, or Federal Security Service; this is Russia’s state security organization since 1995 and a successor of the Soviet-era KGB.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2016 1:03 am Post subject:
Britain's media and government are trying to set the Russians up as masters of Polonium poisoning...
Mega denials of the facts that this is a favoured MI6 CIA & Zionist Mafia method of killing
of Yasser Arafat's murder by Polonium quite clear mainstream media psyop campaign to rewrite history
Quote:
Britain's media and government are trying to set the Russians up as masters of Polonium poisoning...
Mega denials of the facts that this is a favoured MI6 CIA & Zionist Mafia method of killing
Multiple forcible but speculative denials of Yasser Arafat's murder by Polonium quite clear mainstream media psyop campaign to rewrite history
Just google Arafat and Polonium and you'll see what I mean
Literally scores of unfounded denials of the Swiss lab reports and Arafat's poor wife being called a liar or idiot..
This is an Inconvenient truth.
Watch out for more MI6 CIA Mossad Polonium poisonings to come being blamed on Putin...
My reading of this link the the 1999 Moscow/Russian apartment bombings is Boris Beresovsky was the main instigator of the 2nd Chechen war and bombing campaign and hed given Litvinenko material on the bombings which implicated the FSB but not him.
Nice then that Litvinenkos book doesn't include the Beresovsky role but the problem was what when he found out about that....?
Cant have our Litty then backtracking being the world expert in the 1999 bombings.
Did you watch documentaries on the Ryazan bomb which was defused??
Shocking. Really shocking blatant coverup.
Putin may have been involved in the cover up there in Ryasan but Beresovsky was definitely.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2016 12:41 pm Post subject:
Blowing Up Russia
This Documentary Was Shown Just Once On Russian TV in 2000 it got halfway Through then took A TV Ad Break, that Was It.
MUST SEE DOCUMENTARY BANNED BY PUTIN
Based on Litvinenko's book - Blowing Up Russia
Nobody is more mysterious than Mario Scaramella, the self-styled Italian "professor" who lunched with the Russian defector on the day he was poisoned.
It was at the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly, where the two men met at 3pm on 1 November, that the highest levels of polonium-210 radiation have been found. Mr Scaramella says he only drank water, while Mr Litvinenko had miso soup and sushi. Traces of the radioactive substance have also been found in the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square, where the defector had tea with Russian associates, including a former colleague in the FSB, the successor service to the KGB, later in the afternoon.
And Mr Scaramella himself has now tested positive for the deadly isotope, and is being treated at University College Hospital, where Mr Litvinenko died. Mr Scaramella is not said to be in danger, but somehow or other he came into contact with the substance.
Mr Litvinenko accused Mr Scaramella of poisoning him from the day he first fell ill: as the Italian told me, his name was all over Russian and Chechen websites as the main suspect in the poisoning of the former FSB agent long before the story hit the British press. Mr Litvinenko retained his suspicion right up to his death. Speaking of the Itsu meeting, he said: "Mario didn't want anything, he gave me the email printouts ... I said to myself, he could have sent these emails by computer. But instead he wanted to come and give them to me in person: why, and why in such a hurry? He was very nervous."
Mr Scaramella told me that he wanted to hand over the emails in person, because their contents were so sensitive. He said that he told the Russian at the restaurant: "You introduced me to [former Russian spy] Yevgeny Limarev, now Limarev has sent me a very strong statement."
The emails, which The Independent on Sunday has seen, stated that " Russian intelligence officers speak more and more about the necessity to use force" against Mr Scaramella and Mr Litvinenko, among others. But Mr Limarev has denied sending the emails, and his name does not appear anywhere in them.
British police have said they do not consider Mr Scaramella a suspect in Mr Litvinenko's death. He flew to London again last week to meet detectives voluntarily, and the two bodyguards keeping an eye on him at University College Hospital are there for his protection. Since being named as Mr Litvinenko's murderer in the Chechen press, he told me, his life has been at risk. "I was told, if you touch Mr Litvinenko, the Chechens will kill you," he said. "The Chechens have identified me as a military target." Mr Litvinenko was a strong supporter of the Chechen cause after defecting to the UK in 2001.
But while Mr Scaramella's problems in Britain may be mostly medical, in Italy last week he found himself at the centre of a criminal investigation. The accusations date from the five years when he was a consultant to the Mitrokhin Commission, an Italian parliamentary body set up in 2001 on the orders of the then Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to investigate the activities of Soviet and post-Soviet spies in Italy.
Mr Scaramella claims to be many things, including a professor at Naples University, an honorary magistrate, and consultant to something called the Environmental Crime Protection Programme (ECPP). But Naples University has not heard of him. The ECPP has no fixed office. The post as magistrate is non-paying. The only job he has had in recent years over which there is no doubt is with the Mitrokhin Commission.
LITVINENKO "PUBLIC" INQUIRY
"On 21 January 2016, a long-awaited UK report into his death concluded that two Russians - Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun - deliberately poisoned 44-year-old Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 by putting the radioactive substance polonium-210 into his drink.
The original inquest into the death became stalled over the refusal of the UK government to allow evidence from MI5 and MI6 to be presented. Some eight years later, on 24 July 2014, the inquest was turned into a so-called "Public" Inquiry in which much of its evidence was then heard in private.
The Inquiry announcement was made in the immediate aftermath of the shooting down of a civilian airliner, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, over Eastern Ukraine and whilst President Putin was being vilified by western politicians and Commercially-controlled media in the most extraordinary and sustained manner, as the "obvious" perpetrator. This led to understandable accusations from Russia that the Inquiry had more to do with demonising President Putin and Russia than with genuine concern for justice in the Litvinenko murder case.
The Russian Investigative Committee into the death then refused to take part on the grounds that it was neither public nor free from political motivation. In a Kafkaesque move that effectively denied the chief suspects opportunity to provide evidence in their own defence, the UK Inquiry declined to hear video-link evidence from them and eventually held them to be jointly responsible for the death.
Inquiry chairman Sir Robert Owen said he was "sure" Litvinenko's murder had been carried out by the two men and that they were probably acting under the direction of Moscow's FSB intelligence service, and approved by the FSB's Nikolai Patrushev and President Putin. He said Mr Litvinenko's work for MI5 and MI6, his criticism of the FSB and Mr Putin, and his association with other Russian dissidents were possible motives for his killing. There was also "undoubtedly a personal dimension to the antagonism" between Mr Putin and Mr Litvinenko.
Home Secretary Theresa May told the House of Commons that the murder was a "blatant and unacceptable" breach of international law, and said Prime Minister David Cameron would raise the findings with President Putin at "the next available opportunity". A Downing Street spokeswoman said the report's conclusions were "extremely disturbing", saying: "It is not the way for any state, let alone a permanent member of the UN Security Council, to behave."
Responding to the report, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Alexander Yakovenko said:
"For us it is absolutely unacceptable that the report concludes that the Russian state was in any way involved in the death of Mr Litvinenko on British soil,"
Andrei Lugovoi, who is now a politician in Russia, said:
"The results of the investigation made public today yet again confirm London's anti-Russian position, its blinkeredness and the unwillingness of the English to establish the true reason of Litvinenko's death."
Dmitry Kovtun said he would not comment on the report until he got more information about its contents."
quote posted in this FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1466172403682711/ John Pilger - Hidden Agendas, Honest Debates _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 10:08 pm Post subject:
The big mistake from the Litvinenko Inquiry is that it has left many people thinking that Litvinenko was murdered. There is circumstantial evidence that he was a mule for Berezovsky. The important thing about an Inquiry replacing an inquest means that the chair, in this case Sir Robert Owen, can say what he wants, or what he is instructed to say. But it is not tested. Because there has been no inquest it cannot be said that Litvinenko was murdered. I have tried to show that here.
The Inquiries Act of 2005 needs abolishing. It is an obstacle to the truth. It all started with Dr David Kelly's 'murder' in which Tony Blair got his friend Lord Falconer to initiate the Hutton 'whitewash' before the pathologist had seen the body. It was the start of something unacceptable and is now legal. So let's not even talk about murder. Nobody knows because there has not been an inquest. Robert Owen's Inquiry is a farce.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 10:41 pm Post subject:
Six reasons you can't take the Litvinenko report seriously:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/05/litvinenko-report-get-it -wrong-putin
Part of this article mentions Scaramella, who Litvinenko initially accused of poisoning him.:
'...6. Dubious reasoning
The role of Mario Scaramella, an Italian sometimes described as an academic, presented a dilemma for the inquiry. At first Litvinenko publically accused Scaramella of poisoning him to stop him disclosing information about Russia’s culpability in Politkovskaya’s death. But the story seems to have changed after Berezovsky visited Litvinenko in hospital, after which his people began saying that Litvinenko had blamed Putin....' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2016 1:16 am Post subject:
Top scientist who discovered Litvinenko poison 'stabbed himself to death with two knives' after trip to Russia
The father-of-two reportedly died from self-inflicted injuries, despite one detective believing he couldn't have stayed conscious long enough to wound himself that much
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-scientist-who-discovered-litv inenko-9325403
BY IMOGEN ROBINSON
15:53, 24 NOV 2016UPDATED19:28, 24 NOV 2016
NEWS
Alexander Litvinenko
Dr Puncher was one of the experts investigation the polonium poison of Alexander Litvinenko, picture here in a hospital bed shortly before his death.
The radiation expert who discovered the poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko "committed suicide" by stabbing himself repeatedly with two knives months after a trip to Russia, a coroner ruled.
Matthew Puncher, 46, bled to death at his home after receiving multiple stab wounds across his body from two kitchen knives, an inquest heard.
A pathologist said he could not completely exclude the possibility that someone else had been involved in the death of the father, but came to the conclusion that the injuries were self-inflicted.
But one detective claimed she didn't think he could have done so much damage to himself without falling unconscious.
A coroner recorded that Dr Puncher, who discovered the amount of polonium inside Litvinenko after he drank poisoned tea in London in 2006, committed suicide.
Dr Puncher was an expert in radiation protection dosimetry and worked for Public Health England at the UK's Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxon.
He had been given sole responsibility over a contract with the US Federal Government for a programme measuring polonium inside former USSR nuclear weapons workers.
READ MORE
Alexander Litvinenko's deadly radiation cup 'served to another man' just after he was poisoned
His wife Kathryn and work colleagues told an inquest into his death that he had "become obsessed" with a mistake he had made in his research.
She also said his mood "completely changed" after a visit to Russia before Christmas.
He was found dead at his home in Drayton, Oxfordshire, in May, with stab wounds to his arms, neck and upper abdomen.
His body was examined by Home Office pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt who also conducted the post mortem on weapons expert Dr David Kelly in 2003.
Dr Kelly was found dead in woodland near his South Oxfordshire home, less than 10 miles from where Dr Puncher lived.
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Suicidal man talked down from bridge returns to spot a WEEK later to beg others to seek help
The Hutton Inquiry concluded that Dr Kelly had committed suicide.
Detective Constable Rachel Clarke, who investigated Dr Puncher's death, said: "His injuries were so extensive, I didn't know how he could have inflicted them on himself without becoming unconscious so we looked at the wider circumstances."
Pathologist Dr Hunt said it was possible for a person to self-inflict the number of wounds he did before becoming unconscious.
DC Clarke told Oxford Coroner's Court there was no evidence of a disturbance or a struggle and no evidence of anyone else's blood.
And she added: "It was very unusual. All the information told us he was very depressed and no-one in his family seemed particularly surprised he had taken his own life."
Dr Puncher's wife of 16 years, Kathryn said: "He was always an upbeat and sensitive man.
"He was brilliant with the children as he was so intelligent and enjoyed helping them with their homework.
"After Christmas he changed completely. He just lost interest and I had to prompt him to do things like getting dressed and washing up, things he did without thinking before.
"He used to cook all the meals but he just stopped. He seemed to stop caring about anything."
Head of department at Harwell, George Etherington, described Dr Puncher's concerns that his 'coding error' would land him prison for breaking a contract with the US Government as "irrational".
A colleague also described it as a "minor problem".
Dr Puncher and a colleague calculated the amount of polonimum-210 found inside Alexander Litvinenko's body following his death in 2006.
Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian FSB secret service who specialised in tackling organised crime.
He fled with his family to London and was granted asylum in 2000 and worked as a journalist, writer and consultant for the British intelligence services.
In January 2016 a UK public inquiry concluded the defector was probably murdered on the direct orders of the Russian security service FSB, approved by President Putin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKfNrRT-M1M
Harwell nuclear scientist Matthew Puncher, who discovered Russian investigative writer Alexander Litvinenko polonium poison, 'stabbed himself to death with two knives' after trip to Russia: polonium trail; Putin's rise to power and Chief Russian Jewish Oligarch Boris Berezovsky who died in suspicious circumstances in London in 2013 – false flag bombings in Moscow backed by West to stop communism in Russia; 'Blowing up Russia' book by Litvinenko; NTV programme about this Alexander Litvinenko, who really killed him & why? After ANOTHER suspicious death we smash the Litvinenko polonium conspiracy to smithereens tonight - Background to Alexander Litvinenko poisoning and his 2006 book 'Blowing Up Russia' about the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings: The Rise of Putin and The Fall of The Russian-Jewish Oligarchs - Authoritarian Britain, Briefing 2: The 2008 bailout robbery and the death of capitalism - Money: Gov. could print money and put it straight into economy; economic warfare – banks not tanks – political power – Desmond Morton;
Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 44 Location: Brisbane Australia
Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2016 10:46 pm Post subject:
Rather than the speculation and guesswork that characterises most of the so-called reporting on this subject, I recommend that your readers acquaint themselves with two books by William Dunkerley on the subject. They are The Phony Litvinenko Murder (2011) and Litvinenko Murder Case Solved (2015).
--The London coroner was charged with making a positive ID of the killer.
--He dictated a deathbed statement blaming Putin for poisoning him.
--The London coroner was charged with making a positive ID of the killer.
--A public inquiry was convened to give transparency to the investigation.
Each one of those sentences has something wrong with it. Can you recognize what it is? Probably you can't. If you've relied upon the media for whatever you may know about the Litvinenko case, chances are that you can see nothing problematic in those statements. But they are all surely problematic.
There is far more to the mysterious Litvinenko death than meets the eye. There's more to it than you can glean from mass media reports.
That's because there is a surprising mystery behind the mystery. The media have addressed only the part that lies on the surface. That means if you've relied upon news reports you've gotten only half the story.
I wrote this book to fill you in on the other half. There is a dramatic behind-the-scenes story in the Litvinenko murder mystery. That's what I'll chronicle for you here. You'll learn about the little-known mystery behind the mystery.
--Why did the case attract so much media attention?
--Was state sponsored terrorism involved?
--Who masterminded the whole thing?
--Was Litvinenko really murdered?
--What about the rogue coroner who refused to do his job?
--What went wrong with the inquest, and why did it collapse?
--How was the case politicized at the highest levels of UK government?
This book will answer these and other questions. It will open your eyes to an entirely new dimension...
The foregoing is excerpted from Litvinenko Murder Case Solved (www.AlexanderLitvinenko.Info) a newly-released book from Omnicom Press that offers the final conslusion to this puzzling and long-unsolved mystery.
James O'Neill wrote:
Rather than the speculation and guesswork that characterises most of the so-called reporting on this subject, I recommend that your readers acquaint themselves with two books by William Dunkerley on the subject. They are The Phony Litvinenko Murder (2011) and Litvinenko Murder Case Solved (2015).
It is now known that the Islamic insurgency in the Caucasus (according to many experts an Al-Qaeda operation) had been an integral part of a long-term Western plan to wrestle the Caucasus region away from Russian control and place it under what some experts refer to as an Islamic Caliphate. Ankara, Baku and Tbilisi, as well as a steady stream of Islamic militants trained in the Arabian peninsula, Pakistan and Afghanistan were the active participants in this agenda throughout much of the 1990s, and its funding and organization was carried out by a consortium of special interests in Washington, London and Riyadh.
It is also now known that Western intelligence agencies also conspired to force Russia out of the Balkans (Yugoslavia in particular) and Central Asia by targeting pro-Russian bastions in those regions. As it has been since the early 1980s, Islamic extremists have been the readily accessible tool Western powers have exploited to carryout their geopolitical agenda in various theaters of operation.
Why should this seemingly Russian problem concern us Armenians?
Armenians in general, Diasporan Armenians in particular, seem to be having a hard time accepting the fact that a weakened Russia in the Caucasus poses an existential threat for Armenia. To those among us that do not possess clearness of thought regarding this matter, I would just like to say that the Caucasus without an effective Russian presence in it would prove disastrous not only for Armenia but for the entire Eurasian continent. Joining three important geopolitical zones - Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East - the Caucasus region is the gateway to Russia's vulnerable south, also known as its soft underbelly. The region is also a major hub for the strategic transfer of Eurasian energy and trade. Strategic planner have long realized that those who are able to control this region could potentially impact much of Eurasia and beyond.
The heavily Turkic and Islamic cultural/ethnic makeup of the region in question would not tolerate a non-aligned, a non-Turkic or a non-Islamic power in their midst - without a major outside power acting as a guarantor or as a counter weight. Against this Islamic and Turkic center-of-gravity, the Russian presence has been the only counter-influence in the region for the past two hundred years. And it is precisely because of this Russian presence in the Caucasus that we Armenians have been able to maintain nation-state in the region.
It is quite frightening that unbeknownst to most Armenians (because our collective attention has naturally been drawn to the region's east-west geopolitical plain), the northern Caucasus was actually on the verge of a radical Islamic/Turkic transformation throughout much of the 1990s. Had the northern Caucasus fallen victim to this Western/Turkic/Islamic agenda, it would have been the southern Caucasus' turn not much long thereafter.
In short, without a Russian presence in the Caucasus, the region in question would eventually transform itself into a Turkic/Islamic cesspool. Had the West's intentions for the Caucasus succeeded, not only would we Armenians be lamenting the lose of Nagorno Karabakh today, we would most probably be lamenting the lose of our fledgling republic as well. Without a Russian presence in the Caucasus, Armenia would be subordinate to Ankara, Baku and/or Tbilisi. Those who complain about Armenia's current dependence on Moscow need to take the aforementioned geopolitical prospect into serious consideration.
Although Vladimir Putin and company have succeeded in crushing the Islamic terror onslaught in the northern Caucasus in the early 2000s and managed to defeat the Western backed regime in Georgia in 2008, Moscow nevertheless realizes that a potential threat remain in the region. As a result, as long as ethnic Russians run the show in the Kremlin, Moscow will do everything in its power to have a strong presence in the Caucasus. And needless to say, Armenia is pivotal to the Kremlin's regional agenda. Armenians need to wake up from their sleep and realize that US actions in the region has directly and indirectly been very detrimental to the health and well being of Armenia. Had the US been successful in its policies against Russia, Armenia would have once again disappeared from the map.
The Caucasus region is like a table where Westerners, Turks, Azeris, Georgians, Iranians, Islamists, Russians and Armenians sit around and discuss political and economic matters. Imagine an Armenia at this table without the presence of Russia. In other words: Imagine Armenia's situation in a Turkic, Islamic and Western dominated political landscape without the presence of the Russian Bear. Yes, it's a very frightening proposition. Ultimately, what the south Caucasus needs is Pax Russicana. For that to happen, Russia has to drive-out Western interests from the entire region.
The West Masterminded Chechen War to Destroy USSR and Russia:
Fifteen years ago, on December 11, 1994, Russian troops entered the territory of the Chechen Republic, which marked the beginning of the First Chechen Campaign to root out terrorism and establish law and order in the troubled nation. The events, which triggered the armed conflict, started developing in the autumn of 1991, when the Chechen administration declared sovereignty and announced its decision to pull out from the RSFSR and the USSR. During the next three years the Chechen government was busy with dissolving the previous power agencies, canceling the laws of the Russian Federation and establishing the armed forces of Chechnya with President Gen. Jokhar Dudayev at the head. The armed forces of Chechnya were armed with Soviet-made small arms and military hardware that were left in the republic after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As a result of such separatist activities, Chechnya became a real threat to Russia and became a source of international terrorism. Military actions in the republic continued for nearly two years. Over 4,000 Russian servicemen were killed in the war, about 2,000 went missing and nearly 20,000 were wounded, RIA Novosti says. Russia and Chechnya signed the Khasavyurt Accord in 1996 - after two years of military actions – the ceasefire agreement, which marked the end of the First Chechen War. The document was signed by the head of Russia’s Security Council Alexander Lebed and the leader of the Chechen separatist movement Aslan Maskhadov. Lebed died in a helicopter crash in 2002. Maskhadov, the leader of Chechen terrorists, was killed by Russian troops in 2005.
Chechnya became Russia’s strongest pain. Thousands of Russian families and people of other nationalities left the republic. The Chechen administration had a goal to build an independent Islamic state from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. The second Chechen war began in the summer of 1999 with the intrusion of Shamil Basayev’s and Khattab’s gunmen in the Republic of Dagestan. Chechnya started living under the conditions of a counter-terrorist operation, which continued for ten years and was officially stopped only on April 16, 2009. All terrorist leaders were killed during the second campaign. Many former separatists took the side of Chechnya’s legitimate administration chaired by pro-Russian politician Akhmad Kadyrov. Russia wired enormous funds to Chechnya to restore the nation’s economy.
The West could do nothing else but follow the policy of double standards and accuse Russia of violation of human rights in Chechnya. Chechen terrorists conducted and claimed responsibility for a series of horrific terrorist acts in Russia throughout those years: apartment buildings were exploded in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk in 1999; hundreds were taken hostage at Moscow’s music theater in 2002. The Chechen gunmen conducted the most terrible terrorist act in September of 2004, when they killed tens of innocent children in Beslan. Chechnya ’s sitting President Ramzan Kadyrov, who was a teenager during the First Chechen War, believes that the war in Chechnya was masterminded by the West. Western countries, Kadyrov thinks, instigated the war to make the USSR and then Russia collapse.
“It is an open secret nowadays that the Soviet Union fell apart contrary to the will of its people. They decided in the West that they should not stop at that. They wanted to fire up a local war which would embrace more regions and eventually weaken or even destroy Russia as a joint nation,” Kadyrov told journalists December 11 in Grozny. “They wanted to trigger a local religious conflict in Chechnya and have the Muslim population involved in it. Afterwards, they wanted to provoke mass disturbances in the country. I am certain that there were no objective reasons to start the war with the use of aviation, artillery and hundreds of thousands of military men,” Interfax quoted Kadyrov as saying.
“The West was pursuing its goal, but Russia’s then-administration unconsciously did its bidding and let the local conflict grow into a national tragedy. No one can say today how many billions of dollars Russia had to spend on that war. It was the West that obtruded the war on Russia,” Kadyrov said. It is worthy of note that the deployment of Russian troops in Chechnya was not a disturbance of the republic’s peaceful life. First blood was shed long before December 11, 1994. Chechnya was involved in a series of internal fratricidal wars before 1994.
The Kremlin-backed chief of Russia's turbulent Chechnya region said his forces were fighting U.S. and British intelligence services who want to split the country apart, according to an interview published on Thursday. Former rebel-turned-Moscow-ally Ramzan Kadyrov said in comments to Zavtra newspaper reprinted on his official website that he had seen the U.S. driving licence of a CIA operative who was killed in a security operation he led. Chechen authorities have previously said insurgents following the radical Wahabist form of Islam receive support from international Islamist groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but have not accused the West of instigating violence. "We're fighting in the mountains with the American and English intelligence agencies. They are fighting not against Kadyrov, not against traditional Islam, they are fighting against the sovereign Russian state," he said.
The West sought to attack both Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the country as a whole by targeting the country's weakest regions, Kadyrov said in the comments republished prominently on www.chechnya.gov.ru. Kadyrov was appointed by Moscow as a bulwark against separatist rebels in the mainly Muslim province, but rights activists say he flouts federal laws and is himself responsible for much of the violence that has grown in recent months. "The West is interested to cut off the Caucasus from Russia. The Caucasus - a strategic frontier of Russia. If they take away the Caucasus from Russia, it's like taking away half of Russia."
Many Chechens have emigrated to Europe, Turkey, and Georgia and some have been recruited as insurgents, said Kadyrov. "Now they strike a blow against Putin and Russia. Chechnya, Dagestan are weak, vulnerable parts of the Russian state," Kadyrov said, referring to the neighbouring region, which has also been rocked by violence. Asked if he was saying there were signs of CIA and MI6 participation in the violence, he said "Of course", he had seen evidence of their direct involvement in an operation he led. "There was a terrorist Chitigov, he worked for the CIA. He had U.S. citizenship...When we killed him, I was in charge of the operation and we found a U.S. driving licence and all the other documents were also American," he said.
Western Secret Services Plotted Chechnya’s Separation
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The western secret services plotted in 1990s Chechnya’s separation from Russia. Ichkeria’s passports were printed in France and the weapons were delivered to Chechnya via Georgia, according to The Caucasus Plan documentary that Russia’s First Channel showed late Tuesday. One of protagonists of the film is Abubakar, Turkey’s resident of Chechnya’s origin, who has been living under the assumed name of Berkan Yashar for 40 years. Yashar said he got that name after inking a contract with the U.S. Department of State.
In the documentary, Yashar narrated how he had been building up a political platform for Chechnya’s separation in early 1990s. The project was funded by different states. The passports for unrecognized Ichkeria were printed in France, the money was minted in Germany, Yashar said. Then Chechnya’s President Johar Dudaev appointed Yashar deputy foreign minister in 1992. Yashar simultaneously held different offices in Turkish government. He was the so-called power behind the throne in 1990s in Chechnya, controlling all more or less significant financial transactions of the North Caucasus militants, the filmmakers said.
He was one of the masterminds of the diamond trafficking operation. Rough diamonds from northern Russia were illegally exported by using the charter flights. Representatives of Turkey and officials of Azerbaijan's government were involved in negotiations aimed at arranging the flights. The profit was spent to buy mines to explode combat vehicles, Abubakar told the camera crew.
Theoretically, the aircraft flights were banned from Grozny, but the airport got the permission somehow. The plane first flew to Baku, Azerbaijan, and then to Turkey as an Azeri airliner. But that channel was closed in a few years and they had to establish a new link, via Georgia, through Pankiss Gorge, Yashar said. Boris Berezovsky took over the diamond business in part and in whole, according to Yashar. I knew practically nothing about that man, who later on has completely grabbed that business and is in it, I’m sure at 100 percent, up to today, Yashar said.
Russia's security chief said that Western spies were working to weaken and break up the country and singled out British agents as the most intrusive, according to an interview published Wednesday. Nikolai Patrushev, who heads the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency, also claimed that foreign spies were working to foment discontent in Russia in the run-up to December's parliamentary elections and the presidential vote next spring. Patrushev is a longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin, and his comments reflect deeply entrenched suspicions of Western intentions in the Kremlin's inner circle amid a cold spell in Russia's relations with the West. Putin himself is a 16-year KGB veteran and former chief of the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB. "Politicians thinking in the categories of the Cold War still retain their influence in a number of Western nations," Patrushev told the weekly Argumenty i Fakty. "They have claimed credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they are hatching plans aimed at dismembering Russia. They are viewing special services and their organizations as an efficient instrument for their implementation."
Patrushev said that foreign spies were focusing their efforts on gathering information related to Russia's elections. "They are trying to influence protest feelings and demonstrations in Russia." He singled out Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, saying its agents "aren't only gathering intelligence in all areas, but they are also trying to influence the development of the domestic political situation in our country." Britain's Foreign Office didn't immediately have any comment on the matter. Russian-British relations have been sliding, and they were strained further by last November's poisoning death in London of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko, a fierce Kremlin critic given asylum in Britain, accused Putin on his deathbed of being behind his polonium poisoning — charges the Kremlin has angrily denied. Russia has rejected British demands for the extradition of the sole suspect in Litvinenko's murder, former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, who met with Litvinenko in a London hotel bar the day he fell ill. Putin dismissed the extradition demands as a relic of British "colonial thinking." Patrushev said that his agency had learned how to counter British intelligence. "We know both its strong and weak points," he said. "Since the times of Elizabeth I, (MI6) agents have been guided by the principle of the ways justifying the means. Money, bribery, blackmail, exemption from punishment for crimes committed are their main recruitment methods."
Patrushev claimed that British intelligence has relied on people who fled abroad to avoid criminal charges in Russia — an apparent hint at Kremlin critics living in Britain, such as tycoon Boris Berezovsky and Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev. Russia has vainly sought their extradition. Patrushev also alleged that foreign spies were using non-governmental organizations "both for gathering intelligence information and as an instrument for having a hidden influence over political processes." He pointed at the revolutions that ousted unpopular governments in the former Yugoslavia, Ukraine and Georgia as a product of such activities. The statement reflected Kremlin concerns over outside influence within Russia amid Western accusations of backsliding on democracy — the fears that prompted the government to tighten restrictions on NGOs. "There is a danger of foreign NGOs being used to finance activities to undermine Russia," Patrushev said. He claimed that some NGOs were also being used by international terror groups to support militants in Russia's volatile North Caucasus. Patrushev said the CIA and MI6 were actively relying on the special services of Poland, Georgia and the Baltics to spy on Russia. He said his agency had uncovered 270 foreign intelligence officers and 70 agents they had recruited, including 35 Russian citizens, since 2003. While fuming at the West, Patrushev said that his agency would continue to cooperate with its Western counterparts in combating international terrorism.
With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the war in Chechnya had been planned during a secret summit of HizbAllah International held in 1996 in Mogadishu, Somalia. 21 The summit, was attended by Osama bin Laden and high-ranking Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officers. In this regard, the involvement of Pakistan's ISI in Chechnya "goes far beyond supplying the Chechens with weapons and expertise: the ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war". Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington's perfunctory condemnation of Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin. The two main Chechen rebel armies (respectively led by Commander Shamil Basayev and Emir Khattab) estimated at 35,000 strong were supported by Pakistan's ISI, which also played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen rebel army:
[In 1994] the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence arranged for Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in the Khost province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia camp, set up in the early 1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July 1994, upon graduating from Amir Muawia, Basayev was transferred to Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo training in advanced guerrilla tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the highest ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officers: Minister of Defense General Aftab Shahban Mirani, Minister of Interior General Naserullah Babar, and the head of the ISI branch in charge of supporting Islamic causes, General Javed Ashraf, (all now retired). High-level connections soon proved very useful to Basayev.
Following his training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was assigned to lead the assault against Russian federal troops in the first Chechen war in 1995. His organization had also developed extensive links to criminal syndicates in Moscow as well as ties to Albanian organized crime and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1997-98, according to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) "Chechen warlords started buying up real estate in Kosovo... through several real estate firms registered as a cover in Yugoslavia. Basayev's organisation has also been involved in a number of rackets including narcotics, illegal tapping and sabotage of Russia's oil pipelines, kidnapping, prostitution, trade in counterfeit dollars and the smuggling of nuclear materials (See Mafia linked to Albania's collapsed pyramids, 25 Alongside the extensive laundering of drug money, the proceeds of various illicit activities have been funneled towards the recruitment of mercenaries and the purchase of weapons.
During his training in Afghanistan, Shamil Basayev linked up with Saudi born veteran Mujahideen Commander "Al Khattab" who had fought as a volunteer in Afghanistan. Barely a few months after Basayev's return to Grozny, Khattab was invited (early 1995) to set up an army base in Chechnya for the training of Mujahideen fighters. According to the BBC, Khattab's posting to Chechnya had been "arranged through the Saudi-Arabian based [International] Islamic Relief Organisation, a militant religious organisation, funded by mosques and rich individuals which channeled funds into Chechnya". Concluding Remarks Since the Cold War era, Washington has consciously supported Osama bin Laden, while at same time placing him on the FBI's "most wanted list" as the World's foremost terrorist. While the Mujahideen are busy fighting America's war in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, the FBI --operating as a US based Police Force- is waging a domestic war against terrorism, operating in some respects independently of the CIA which has --since the Soviet-Afghan war-- supported international terrorism through its covert operations.
In a cruel irony, while the Islamic jihad --featured by the Bush Adminstration as "a threat to America"-- is blamed for the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, these same Islamic organisations constitute a key instrument of US military-intelligence operations in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the truth must prevail to prevent the Bush Adminstration together with its NATO partners from embarking upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.
British And American Covert Operations In Chechnya
"The Clinton administration followed up by providing strong support to the KLA, even though it was known that the KLA supported the Muslim mujahadeen. Despite that knowledge, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had the KLA removed from the State Department list of terrorists. This action paved the way for the United States to provide the KLA with needed logistical support. At the same time, the KLA also received support from Iran and Usama bin Laden, along with 'Islamic holy warriors' who were jihad veterans from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Swiss journalist Richard Labeviere, in his book, 'Dollars for Terror,' said that the international Islamic networks linked to bin Laden received help from U.S. intelligence community. Indeed, Chechen sources claim that U.S. intelligence also aided them in their opposition to Russia. Given that U.S. policy in the post-Cold War period has not only been anti-Russian but anti-Iranian, the United States worked closely with Pakistan's predominantly Sunni Inter-Services Intelligence organization. Through ISI, the United States recruited Sunni mujahadeen by staging them in Chechnya to fight in Bosnia and later in Kosovo."
"As the intelligence newsletter Stratfor -- which Time magazine ranked as the nation's top intelligence site in 2003, and which Barron's described as 'a private quasi-CIA' -- pointed out a few months ago, with Ukraine now firmly in the West's orbit, America, with NATO and the EU, has managed to succeed exactly where Hitler and Napoleon failed: it has dismantled the Russian empire, leaving the rump state exposed, weakened and essentially at the West's mercy.... In the wake of the Beslan massacre in September, 2004, in which hundreds of children were killed during a Chechen separatist seizure of a school in southern Russia, President Putin went on television and blamed certain foreign powers for supporting the terrorists with the aim of defanging Russia for good, breaking it apart, and seizing its valuable resources. He did not name the United States, but it was clear whom he meant. .....Stratfor, whose politics could be described as something between patriotic-American and realpolitik, agreed. According to its Kremlin sources, Putin specifically named the U.S. and Great Britain during private meetings. And as Stratfor noted in its April report, there is plenty of evidence to support the Kremlin's claim. In the first place, while Muslim separatist militants from other conflict zones are shunned and even violently pursued by the U.S., the Chechen separatist representatives are routinely given haven and official voice in both the U.K. and America. ... As Stratfor notes, the British connection to the Chechen separatists goes farther back. 'During the first Chechen war -- from 1994 to 1996 -- retired U.K. special forces officers trained British Muslim recruits in British territory to fight in Chechnya,' Stratfor claims, echoing reports out of Russia. 'Some militants who attended that training and were later captured told the Russian government.' After Chechnya gained de facto independence, a scandal apparently erupted in Russia-U.K. relations when de-mining instructors from a private security firm, which included American ex-military personnel, were caught 'training Chechen militants how to launch mine and bombing attacks against Russian troops,' according to Stratfor.."
"Why would a group of leading American neo-conservatives, dedicated to fighting Islamic terror, have climbed into bed with Chechen rebels linked to al-Qaeda? The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), which includes Pentagon supremo Richard Perle, says the conflict between Russia and Chechnya is about Chechen nationalism, not terrorism. The ACPC savaged Russia for the atrocities its forces have committed in the Caucuses, said President Vladimir Putin was 'ridiculous', claimed Russia was more 'morally' to blame for the bloodshed than Chechen separatists and played down links between al-Qaeda and the 'Chechen resistance'. The ACPC's support for the Chechen cause seems bizarre, as many of its members are among the most outspoken US policymakers who have made it clear that Islamist terror must be wiped out. But the organisation has tried to broker peace talks between Russia and Chechen separatists. The ACPC includes many leaders of the neo-conservative think-tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which advocates American domination of the world.... ACPC executive director Glen Howard said the continuation of the 'brutalising tactics' of Russian forces would only lead to 'the resistance employing more brutal tactics' like the assault on School Number One in Beslan...... The nurturing of Chechen fighters against Russia recalls America's support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan - an act that went on to spawn al-Qaeda and the Taliban.... Howard said hardliners like Richard Perle were backing Chechnya as they 'understood what it feels like to be under the Russian yolk'. Some critics believe the support for the Chechens may be a cold war hangover or part of a policy to keep Russia weak through bloodletting in the Caucuses.... According to Howard, due to the vast energy resources in the Caucuses, the West, which is heavily dependent on foreign energy, has strategic interests in the area to which it cannot afford to turn a blind eye."
Russian Channel 1 presents a documentary ‘Plan Caucasus’ about the plan of western intelligence service to make Caucasus the battlefield between the Western world and Russia. The reporter states that the first point was the ignition of Nagorny Karabakh conflict and then in other places of Caucasus via the nationalistic moods strengthening. A Chechen man Abu Bakar, a news analyst of the German radio station «Freedom” in the 60s, who worked under the pseudonym Berkan Yashar, reveals the secret plans of the US Foggy Bottom. Baker was enrolled by the USA, and even after he left ‘Freedom’ and headed for Turkey, where he became a powerful authority, Abu remained a “grey eminence”, through whom the West controlled the situation in Caucasus and financed separatists’ tribes.
He said that the plan of Chechnya annexation was backed by Germany, France, Great Britain, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. His words were proved with pictures of money, printed in Germany that might still be in the Munich factory, and fake passports, printed in France. His words are confirmed by some other people. Thus, Shamseddin Yusef, the Foreign Secretary in Dudaev’s government, says: “CIA people even took us to London. Then the war in Iraq started. They planned to take over Chechnya after the victory in Iraq, but that war didn’t finish as soon as they predicted. Neither does Richard Perl, the ex- US Ministry of Defense counselor and one of the key strategists of the war in Iraq, conceal the fact that America tried to give spiritual and financial support to Dudaev.
The reporter also states, that Western powers pursued in Caucasus not only political, but financial interest as well. Since 1992 with Jokhar Dudaev’s help there operated a contraband canal that exported to the West Russian diamonds and gold. For the right to drive it through Chechnya Dubaev got a quarter of the profit received from diamonds’ gem-cutting and selling. After the airport in Groznyy was shut in 1994, Berkan changed the scheme of diamonds transportation and started to put them across Pankiyskoe clove to Turkey. Akhmed, one of Dudaev’s mates, states that the bloody story of Chechen diamonds goes on even now. The money, saved between the First and Second Chechen Wars, was put in the diamond mines of Africa. The input of money into these mines gives enormous profits to Akhmed Zakaev and Whice Akhmadov, the man, whose name was mentioned in relation to Badri Patarkacishvili’s death.
For several years Kremlin spokespersons have identified Turkey as the primary source of foreign jihadi volunteers (always referred to as naemniky, "mercenaries" in official proclamations) fighting alongside their Chechen adversaries. One spokesman claimed "We keep killing armed Turkish citizens on Chechen territory" and another described Turkey as "a record breaker for producing foreign mercenaries killed in Chechnya." [1] While skeptics might be tempted to dismiss such claims as mere bluster in light of Turkey's well known secular tendencies, the evidence is mounting that Turkish volunteer fighters make up a sizeable component of the foreign element fighting alongside the indigenous Chechen insurgents in Russia.
While it is widely recognized that the 100-200 foreign jihadis fighting alongside the approximately 1,200 Chechen insurgents are led by Arab emirs (commanders) such as the slain Amir Khattab (a Saudi whose mother was Turkish according to jihadist websites), Abu Walid (Saudi killed April 2004), and Abu Hafs al Urdani (aka "Amjet" a Jordanian), the Russian government has consistently maintained that Turks play a prominent role among the foreign "terrorists" in Chechnya. [2]
To support their claims, Russian security services have produced Turkish passports found on the bodies of several slain fighters and have given the names and personal details of Turkish jihadis killed in Chechnya. Among others, Russian spokespersons referenced one Ziya Pece, a Turk who was found dead with a grenade launcher following a fire fight with Federal forces. Russian officials have also provided detailed information on 24 Turkish fighters killed between 1999 and 2004, and Russian soldiers in Chechnya have spoken of engaging a unit of 40 skilled Turkish fighters. [3] If this were not compelling enough evidence, Russian security forces have also produced a living Turkish jihadi named Ali Yaman who was captured in the Chechen village of Gekhi-Chu.
A Turkish Platoon in Chechnya
Surprisingly, this evidence is not refuted by Chechen or Turkish jihadi sources and on the contrary has been corroborated on such forums as the kavkaz.org website produced by Arab and Chechen extremists linked to the field commander Shamil Basayev. The following excerpt from a kavkaz interview with a Turkish jihadi commander in Chechnya is illuminating and suggests the existence of a Turkish jamaat known as the "Ottoman platoon" in the Arab-dominated International Islamic Brigade (it also corroborates the above Russian claim that Federal forces have killed 24 Turks in Chechnya): "Interview with the Chief of the Turkish Jamaat ‘Osmanly' (Ottoman) fighting in Chechnya against the troops of Russian invaders, Amir (Commander) Muhtar, by the Kavkaz Center news agency: (Interviewer) Are there many Turks in Chechnya today? Some mass media were reporting that there are about 20 of you guys.
(Amir Muhtar) Out of the first Jamaat that was fighting in 1995-1996 seven mujahideen have remained. Back then there were 13 of us. They are actually the core of the Turkish jamaat in Chechnya today. Twenty-four Turks have already died in this war. Among them was Zachariah, Muhammed-Fatih, Halil…Three mujahideen became shaheeds (martyrs) during the battle with commandos from Pskov in the vicinity of Ulus-Kert. Some died before that in the battles in Jokhar (Grozny). Five were wounded." [4] In February 2004 a Turkish jihadi website devoted to Chechnya also announced the martyrdom (shehid olmak) of three Turkish mujahideen in just two weeks. [5] Another site that has been removed left the following account of the combat that led to the martyrdom of three Turkish jihadi fighters: "Last night we had news from verifiable sources that a group of Turkish mujahideen came across Russian soldiers north of Vedeno in a small village. After stumbling on them a fire fight ensued and one Algerian and three Turkish brothers died. The Algerian's name is Hassam and the Turkish brothers' names are Ebu Derda, Huzeyfe and Zennun. These brothers fought in Commander Ramazan's unit in the Dagestan conflict." [6]
For several years now Turkish jihadi websites have actually been posting the martyrdom epitaphs of Turkish fighters who died in the Chechen cihad. Much of the jihadist rhetoric found on these Islamist sites will be familiar to those who follow the martyrdom obituaries of foreign jihadis who have died fighting in Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones. The following account, for example, describes the fate of a Turkish fighter who followed the well worn path of roaming Turkish jihadis in the Balkans before being killed: "Shaheed Bilal Al-Qaiseri (Uthman Karkush). 23 years old from Qaiseri, Turkey. Martyred during the Withdrawal from Grozny, February 2000: Bilal fought for six months in Bosnia during 1995 from where he unsuccessfully attempted to travel to Chechnya. He went to fight for the Jihad in Kosova but returned after a month when the fighting ceased. He came to Chechnya in August 1999 where he participated in the Dagestan Operations in Botlikh. After the Mujahideen withdrew, he was planning to return to Turkey when Russia invaded Chechnya. He participated in the fighting in Argun and, subsequently, Grozny. Before and throughout Ramadan he cooked for the Mujahideen in his group. During the fighting he was distinguished for his bravery. After seeing a dream in which he was married, he decided to marry a Chechen, but Shahaadah (martyrdom) was destined for him instead. He was severely injured during the withdrawal from Grozny in the village of Katyr Yurt where his room received a direct hit from Russian Grad Artillery. He was later martyred from his injuries in the village of Shami Yurt."
Ethnicity and Turkish jihad in Chechnya
The following epitah, which describes a Turkish martyr "with some Chechen ancestry" speaks of a deeper and less obvious current in the Turkish jihadi movement that delineates Turkish volunteer fighters from the majority of trans-national Arab jihadis fighting in Chechnya: "Shamil (Afooq Qainar). 25 years old from Istanbul, Turkey.
Martyred in Grozny, November 1999:
With some Chechen ancestory, he deeply loved Chechnya and was more often alongside Chechens than Turks. He had also participated in the Chechen Jihad of 1996-99. With his good manners, polite demeanor and modesty, he got along well with everyone. He also took part in the Dagestan Jihad in the Novalak Region where, notably, his group fought their way out of a Russian siege at a cost of 25 Shaheed (martyrs). He was martyred in the second month of this War (November 1999) in Grozny." [7]
While it might be overlooked, the fact that the slain Shamil is, like many of his compatriots, of Chechen extraction, is of tremendous importance. It would seem that many Turks who volunteer to fight on the behalf of the Chechens do so because they have ethnic origins in the Caucasus region or identify with the Chechens as irkdashlar (kin).
In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia instigated a brutal policy of ethnic cleansing that saw tens of thousands of indigenous Caucasian highlanders expelled to Anatolia. While public expressions of Laz, Circassian, Kosovar, Bosniak, Tatar and Chechen ethnic identity were subsequently discouraged in officially homogenous Republican Turkey, folk traditions such as the famous Caucasian highlander sword dances, Albanian borek (pastry), Crimean Tatar destans (legends), and ritualized commemoration of past victimization at the hands of Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians and others continued.
It was only with the liberalization of Turkey under President Turgut Ozal in the early 1990s that these historical sub-ethnic grievances could be expressed in the public sphere. As this unprecedented celebration of ethnicity and commemoration of past repression took place in a liberalizing Turkey, Turks were confronted with horrifying images from the Balkans and Caucasus. Stories of rape camps in Bosnia, mass graves in Kosovo, and televised images of columns of pitiful Chechen refugees in Russia struck many Turks as a replay of the apocalyptic destruction of millions of Balkan-Caucasian-Ukrainian Muslims by Orthodox Christians in the 19th century.
As a result, informants interviewed by the author in Turkey in the summer of 2004 claimed that many young men from villages in Eastern Turkey inhabited by people of Caucasian origin were told by their family patriarchs to go and fight for their honor, faith, and ancestral homeland in Chechnya. Moreover, with the advent of the internet in Turkey, gruesome images of horribly mutilated Chechen women and children, mass burials and vandalized mosques appeared on Islamist and secular-nationalist websites alike and enraged many traditionalists in the country. In this climate, both nationalists and religious extremists exploited many Turks' sense of ethnic or religious solidarity with their Chechen "brothers and sisters" and invoked strong feelings of namus (a traditional sense of machismo, pride and honor among Turks that comes from the defense of faith, family, motherland, and honor of one's women).
Like the Turks who continue to fight and die in Chechnya, the websites that glorify the defense of the Chechens run the gamut from the anti-American/Zionist rhetoric of the Islamists to the nationalist irredentism of the Pan-Turkists. But the latter predominate. [8] The pro-Chechen websites with an ethnic dimension tend to feature images of Turks wearing traditional Caucasian folk costumes and 19th century anti-Russian heroes. Others with a slightly more nationalist bent (such as www.kafka.4t.com/photos.html) blend images of Ataturk and Alparslan Turkes (the founder of the Turkish Grey Wolves extreme nationalist party) with images from Chechnya. As these sites make clear, many Turks who fight in Chechnya are engaging in the same sort of volunteerism that led Albanian Americans to go fight in Kosovo in 1999 under the auspices of Homeland Calling and other widely recognized diasporic organizations.
This ethnic diaspora narrative might also explain some of the Arab jihadi participation in Chechnya. Many Chechen refugees settled in Ottoman Jordan following their expulsion from Russia in the 19th century. Jordanian Arabs of Chechen extraction, such as the influential Sheikh Muhammad Fatih, have played an important role in the Chechen jihad as warriors, preachers, and fund raisers.
Notwithstanding the involvement of Turks in the Chechen conflict, it would be erroneous to interpret this as proof that secular Turkey faces a serious Islamist problem. Turkish jihadis who have fought in Chechnya have found the Wahhabi Puritanism of their Arab jihadi comrades-in-arms unsettling, and many secular Turks partake in "jihad tours" simply to gain prestige at home in their tight knit families or neighborhoods. In addition, the vast majority of Turks interviewed tended to view Chechens as "terrorists" who reminded them of the hated Kurdish PKK/Kadek militants. Finally, the involvement of two Turkish extremists (Azad Ekinci and Habib Akdas) who had a history of jihadi activity in Chechnya in the bloody al-Qaeda bombings in Istanbul in November 2003 further undermined the Chechen cause in the country. [9] Indeed for all the romantic notions, some Turks have of volunteering to fight on behalf of the Chechens, the carnage wreaked on innocent Turks by El Kaide Turka (Turkish al-Qaeda) clearly demonstrates that jihadism has a potentially unpredictable effect on those who are attracted to it.
With increasing frequency, Russian officials are charging that Islamic fighters, weapons and funds are being funneled via Georgia and Azerbaijan to terrorist groups in the North Caucasus. Such charges have been aired in recent days by Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Federation Council Chairman Yegor Stroev, Duma Chairman Gennady Seleznev, Duma Defense Committee Chairman Roman Popkovich, and Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov (head of the Defense Ministry's Main Department for International Military Cooperation). None of these has cited any supportive evidence.
The timing and venue of some of these statements adds to their significance. Ivanov spoke out on the subject as he emerged from a meeting with President Boris Yeltsin; Stroev, following a closed-door session of the Federation Council on the events in the North Caucasus; and Seleznev as the Duma included those accusations in a special resolution on the situation in the Caucasus. This seems to reflect a growing political backing in Moscow for the use of pressure on Azerbaijan and Georgia, as was the case during the 1995-96 Russian-Chechen war, when Moscow made similar allegations which it was never able to substantiate.
In Baku, senior presidential adviser Vafa Guluzade and National Security Minister Namig Abbasov dismissed the latest charges directed at Azerbaijan as baseless. But the wording of their statements has been remarkably restrained, and other Azerbaijani officials have said nothing. Baku seems intent on preserving the recent, slight warm-up in its bilateral relations with Russia (see the Monitor, September 10) against collateral damage from the war in the North Caucasus.
Georgian officials, for their part, have been more forthright in discussing the potential implications of Moscow's assertions. State Minister [equivalent to prime minister] Vazha Lortkipanidze, who is known for his conciliatory attitude toward Russia, expressed concern that the allegations might presage "an attempt to involve Georgia in the North Caucasus conflict and destabilize the situation in Georgia itself." President Eduard Shevardnadze's adviser on international law, Levan Aleksidze, urged Russia to "stop painting Georgia in the enemy's image" and described the situation in the North Caucasus as evidence of Moscow's "policy error" of supporting separatism in the South even as it combats "separatism" in the North. Georgia's border troops commander, Lieutenant-General Valery Chkheidze, termed the accusations against Georgia "demagogic," designed for internal political consumption.
These Georgian officials, and an official statement of Georgia's Foreign Ministry, all underscored Georgia's interest in upholding the principle of territorial integrity and preservation of existing borders. Azerbaijani President Haidar Aliev--during talks with a Council of Europe delegation in Baku--emphasized Azerbaijan's interest in upholding the same principles and in thwarting Islamic fundamentalism. Specifically, Aliev mentioned Azerbaijan's interest in the restoration of stability in neighboring Dagestan (Itar-Tass, Turan, Azad-Inform, Radio Tbilisi, Prime-News, September 14-19; Nezavisimaya gazeta, September 15).
General Leonid Ivashov (left) with journalist Christopher Bollyn from American Free Press
General Leonid Ivashov was the Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces when the September 11, 2001, attacks took place. This military man, who lived the events from the inside, offers an analysis which is very different to that of his American colleagues. As he did during the Axis for Peace 2005 conference, he now explains that international terrorism does not exist and that the September 11 attacks were the result of a set-up. What we are seeing is a manipulation by the big powers; this terrorism would not exist without them. He affirms that, instead of faking a "world war on terror", the best way to reduce that kind of attacks is through respect for international law and peaceful cooperation among countries and their citizens.
As the current international situation shows, terrorism emerges where contradiction aggravate, where there is a change of social relations or a change of regime, where there is political, economic or social instability, where there is moral decadence, where cynicism and nihilism triumph, where vice is legalized and where crime spreads. It is globalization what creates the conditions for the emergence of these extremely dangerous phenomena. It is in this context that the new world geo-strategic map is being designed, that the resources of the planet are being re-distributed, that borders are disappearing, that international law is being torn into pieces, that cultural identities are being erased, that spiritual life becomes impoverished...
The analysis of the essence of the globalization process, the military and political doctrines of the United States and other countries, shows that terrorism contributes to a world dominance and the submissiveness of states to a global oligarchy. This means that terrorism is not something independent of world politics but simply an instrument, a means to install a unipolar world with a sole world headquarters, a pretext to erase national borders and to establish the rule of a new world elite. It is precisely this elite that constitutes the key element of world terrorism, its ideologist and its "godfather". The main target of the world elite is the historical, cultural, traditional and natural reality; the existing system of relations among states; the world national and state order of human civilization and national identity.
Today's international terrorism is a phenomenon that combines the use of terror by state and non-state political structures as a means to attain their political objectives through people's intimidation, psychological and social destabilization, the elimination of resistance from power organizations and the creation of appropriate conditions for the manipulation of the countries' policies and the behavior of people. Terrorism is the weapon used in a new type of war. At the same time, international terrorism, in complicity with the media, becomes the manager of global processes. It is precisely the symbiosis between media and terror, which allows modifying international politics and the exiting reality. In this context, if we analyze what happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States, we can arrive at the following conclusions:
1. The organizers of those attacks were the political and business circles interested in destabilizing the world order and who had the means necessary to finance the operation. The political conception of this action matured there where tensions emerged in the administration of financial and other types of resources. We have to look for the reasons of the attacks in the coincidence of interests of the big capital at global and transnational levels, in the circles that were not satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction. Unlike traditional wars, whose conception is determined by generals and politicians, the oligarchs and politicians submitted to the former were the ones who did it this time.
2. Only secret services and their current chiefs x or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations x have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude. Generally, secret services create, finance and control extremist organizations. Without the support of secret services, these organizations cannot exist x let alone carry out operations of such magnitude inside countries so well protected. Planning and carrying out an operation on this scale is extremely complex.
3. Osama bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders. Thus, a team of professionals had to be created and the Arab kamikazes are just extras to mask the operation. The September 11 operation modified the course of events in the world in the direction chosen by transnational mafias and international oligarchs; that is, those who hope to control the planet's natural resources, the world information network and the financial flows. This operation also favored the US economic and political elite that also seeks world dominance.
The use of the term "international terrorism" has the following goals:
Hiding the real objectives of the forces deployed all over the world in the struggle for dominance and control; Turning the people's demands to a struggle of undefined goals against an invisible enemy; Destroying basic international norms and changing concepts such as: aggression, state terror, dictatorship or movement of national liberation; Depriving peoples of their legitimate right to fight against aggressions and to reject the work of foreign intelligence services; Establishing the principle of renunciation to national interests, transforming objectives in the military field by giving priority to the war on terror, violating the logic of military alliances to the detriment of a joint defense and to favor the anti-terrorist coalition; Solving economic problems through a tough military rule using the war on terror as a pretext. In order to fight in an efficient way against international terrorism it is necessary to take the following steps:
To confirm before the UN General Assembly the principles of the UN Charter and international law as principles that all states are obliged to respect; To create a geo-strategic organization (perhaps inspired in the Cooperation Organization of Shanghai comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) with a set of values different to that of the Atlantists; to design a strategy of development of states, a system of international security, another financial and economic model (which would mean that the world would again rest on two pillars); To associate (under the United Nations) the scientific elites in the design and promotion of the philosophical concepts of the Human Being of the 21st Century. To organize the interaction of all religious denominations in the world, on behalf of the stability of humanity's development, security and mutual support.
General Leonid Ivashov is the vice-president of the Academy on geopolitical affairs. He was the chief of the department for General affairs in the Soviet Union's ministry of Defense, secretary of the Council of defense ministers of the Community of independant states (CIS), chief of the Military cooperation department at the Russian federation's Ministry of defense and Joint chief of staff of the Russian armies.
MI6 is stirring up dissent in Russia to influence upcoming elections and stop President Putin holding on to power, the Kremlin's security chief claimed yesterday. The head of Russia's Federal Security Service - the successor of the KGB - said British spies were intent on weakening Russia and breaking up the country. British secret agents had been doing the same since the reign of Elizabeth I, claimed Nikolai Patrushev, a close ally of Mr Putin. In an interview with the weekly Argumenty I Fakti, Patrushev alleged that MI6 agents were "not only gathering intelligence in all areas but also trying to influence the development of the domestic political situation in our country." "Right at the moment foreign intelligence services are making considerable efforts to get information about the forthcoming elections to the State Duma (lower house of parliament) and presidency," he said. Last week, Mr. Putin announced he would lead the dominant United Russia party, which would give him a strong chance of becoming Prime Minister next year when the constitution requires that he step down as President after two consecutive terms.
Analysts expect him to engineer the choice of a crony as new President and retain most of the power in Russia himself. Foreign Office sources said this week that election observers are not being given normal access to Russia ahead of the parliamentary vote in December and the presidential election in March. Britain's ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, suffered months of harassment from the pro-Kremlin youth organisation, Nashi, after attending an opposition conference in 2006. The Foreign Office sources said British-Russia relations remained at a low and were not likely to improve in the near future because of Russia's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the businessman wanted in connection with the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London last November. Perhaps speaking for internal consumption, Patrushev painted a paranoid picture of Russia beset on all sides by foreign spies, eager to dig up the country's secrets and destabilise it ahead of the elections. British agents were the worst offenders, he said, although he offered no new evidence. "Since the time of Elizabeth 1 the British principle has been 'the end justifies the means," he said. "Money, corruption, blackmail, offering immunity from prosecution, these are their main methods of recruitment."
In Cold War language, Patrushev attacked not only MI6 but also spies from Poland, the Baltic States, Georgia, Turkey and Pakistan as stooges of the CIA. Spies were poking their noses into everything from the state of Russia's armed forces to conditions in the Caucasus, Siberia and the Far East, he said. "Regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union as their achievement, they are now nurturing plans to carve up Russia," he said. But he reserved special scorn for London, now the base of Russian exiles such as Boris Berezovsky. "Lately, to achieve their political goals, the British have been relying on individuals accused of crimes and hiding abroad from Russian justice," Patrushev said. He reiterated accusations that Berezovksy and Litvinenko had tried to recruit Russian citizens to work for MI6. He also dredged up old allegations, dating back to 2005, that British agents had placed fake rocks in Moscow parks to hide their transmitters. And he claimed that the use of non-governmental organisations was "in the arsenal" of foreign intelligence services trying to provoke a revolution in Russia similar to the 2004 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine.
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A LOOK AT EURASIAN GEOPOLITICS
A look at Eurasian geopolitics
AND RUSSO-ARMENIAN RELATIONS
and Russo-Armenian relations
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