On December 1, 2006, one of the eeriest autopsies in the annals of crime was conducted at the Royal London Hospital. Three British pathologists, covered from head to toe in white protective suits, stood 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 England in November 2000 and had drawn on his experience to denounce the government of the newly installed President Putin. What the pathologists found is still a state secret.
The Specter That Haunts the Death of Litvinenko by Edward Jay Epstein.
Litvinvenko was not poisoned with thallium as originally thought but by polonium-210, one of the world's rarest and most tightly controlled radioactive isotopes. Polonium-210 is a critical component in early-stage nuclear bombs.
Most likely Litvinenko came into contact with a polonium-210 smuggling operation.
What it obscured is the elephant-in-the-room that haunts the case: the fact that a crucial component for building an early-stage nuke was smuggled into London in 2006. Was it brought in merely as a murder weapon or as part of a transaction on the international arms market?
Posted by Jill Fallon at March 19, 2008 1:41 PM | Permalink