russia has always had a reputation for
illicit international activity
from sleeper cells to mysterious number
stations to outright brazen
assassination
if you annoy a russian political leader
enough you have a decent chance of
accidentally falling out of a window and
onto some live bullets
and you may have heard of russian agents
of death coming in forms as strange and
innocuous
as a poison tipped umbrella but what
about a simple
innocent cup of tea you're about to hear
a story about a high profile
assassination
a deadly and mysterious poison and one
of the most bizarre
criminal investigations known to history
a man solving his own murder before he
even died
how could a story this fantastical have
possibly happened
let's take a look and find out imagine
yourself on a normal november day in
london england
you have a decent uneventful morning a
simple breakfast at home perhaps a walk
outside in the crisp fall air
you have a lunch meeting at a sushi
restaurant and then later head over to
the millennium hotel
for yet another meeting at the pine bar
you decline the bartender's offer to
order a drink
after all you don't drink alcohol and
you sit down with the two men you have
arranged to meet
they seem distracted sullen even but
blame the behavior on a long flight into
the country
they have a pot of tea at the table when
you arrive and offer some of the
remaining tea to you
you drink several sips but are put off
by the bitter taste
and decline to finish the cup the men
bid you farewell and you all go your
separate ways
17 days later you're lying in a hospital
bed
in severe pain you experienced intense
diarrhea and vomiting and even lost the
ability to walk without help
before you asked your wife to call you
an ambulance the doctors have diagnosed
you with thallium poisoning however your
symptoms do not completely align with
the case of thallium poisoning
you have damage to your bone marrow and
god that is consistent with thallium
poisoning
but lack the presence of peripheral
neuropathy pain and numbness in the
fingers and feet which is a key
indicator of this ailment
the doctors are baffled by your case and
the british police are just as confused
by your condition
and apparent poisoning only you have an
idea of what could have happened
you believe that you've been
assassinated and you're correct
soon with the help of the authorities
you'll solve your own murder from your
hospital bed
this is exactly what happened to
alexander litvinenko
in november of 2006 and it's just the
tip of the deadly iceberg
alexander litvinenko was a former member
of the russian federal security service
who fled russia to seek political asylum
in the united kingdom
which he was granted he was a vocal
critic of vladimir putin
and referred to his rise in power as a
coup drawing a great deal of negative
attention from putin
he left russia in 2000 and 2003 he began
working with mi6
as an agent and an expert on organized
crime in russia he provided mi6 with
intelligence about the russian mafia
presence in spain
this activity likely reached officials
within the russian government
who were already not great fans of
litvinyenko and who had close ties with
the russian mafia
in the weeks leading up to his
assassination there was a plan in place
for litvinyenko to testify before a
spanish prosecutor
about the influence of the russian mafia
this is likely what placed a target on
his back
and led to his assassination at the
hands of andre lugofoy and dmitry koftu
they poisoned litvinenko not with
thallium as his doctors initially
thought but with polonium-210
a rare deadly nearly undetectable
radioactive isotope
before we learn more about alexander
levinenko's assassination and how he
solved it
we must discuss polonium-210 and what it
does to the human body
polonium is one of the rarest elements
in the world rightfully referred to by
koftoon as a very expensive poison
it was first discovered by marie and
pierre curry in 1898
polonium is so toxic to the human body
that a fatal dose would only need to be
about the size of a speck of dust
that's all that it would take once a
person has ingested the polonium
radiation poisoning begins to set in
nausea hair loss swelling of the throat
and the breakdown of the immune system
are all symptoms of exposure to polonium
after long enough it causes organ
failure and seeps into the bone marrow
eventually it causes cardiac arrest and
death not only is it deadly but polonium
is very difficult to detect
making it a perfect murder weapon
litvinenko's doctors not only determined
a correct diagnosis of polonium-210
poisoning
by testing his urine for the isotope on
the day of his death
but then of course it was much too late
however before he died litvinienko was
able to aid in the investigation into
his own murder
very few people get the opportunity to
solve their death before it happens but
alexander litvinyenko was a brilliant
man who understood that there were many
people out there who wanted to kill him
he also knew that if he had been
assassinated there were only three men
that could have done it
he met with three men on the day that he
was poisoned and it had to be one of
them
first he met with an italian associate
of his mario scarmela for lunch
after lunch he met with lugovoi and
koftoon at the millennium hotel
litvinenko described this meeting in
detail to detective inspector brent
hyatt
of scotland yard in an interview he was
greeted by lugofoy upon
entering the pine bar lugofoy then led
him to a table that was already covered
with mugs and a pot of tea
luthenko did not drink alcohol so the
two men did not attempt to ply him with
something stronger than the tea at the
table
then lugofoe told litvinenko that he was
leaving there was tea left in the pot if
he wanted to drink it
litvinyenko poured himself some tea from
the pot and drank it
in his account litvinenko told hyatt
that he had only a few sips and that the
tea tasted off to him
he also noticed that lugofo did not
drink any tea while sitting at the table
they were then joined by kolftun
lutfanyenko knew even as he was leaving
the hotel that something was off about
the meeting
he told detective inspector hyatt later
on when i left the hotel
i was thinking there was something
strange i had been feeling all the time
i knew that they wanted to kill me
litvanyenko made for an excellent
witness even as he laid dying in the
hospital from an as yet unknown poison
he gave 18 interviews to the detectives
assigned to his case
spanning a total of nearly nine hours
his experience with investigations gave
him a great memory
and he pointed the detectives in the
direction of lugovoy and koftun
he gave the police his email his bank
account in a full account of his history
with the russian federal security
service
as well as explaining why these men
might want him dead with his help the
police began to piece together a clearer
picture of what had happened
to alexander lichfinko on november 1st
2006
at the millennium hotel the
investigation uncovered information that
indicated that contrary to what was
believed
november 1st was not the first attempted
assassination of litvinyanko a radiation
stain was found in a cup left over from
a business meeting between lugofo and
litvinienko in october
but because litvinenko didn't drink any
of the liquid in his cup
the attempt was unsuccessful so the
fateful millennium hotel meeting was set
up
lugovoy told detectives that he arrived
at the hotel for the meeting at 4pm
however when cctv footage was checked it
was revealed that he arrived at 3 32 pm
a half hour earlier than reported he
disappeared into the men's bathroom then
emerged
at 3 45 pm kulfton arrived at the hotel
and did the same
later tests showed a massive amount of
radiation contamination
in one of the bathroom stalls as well as
under the bathroom's hand dryer
these readings were so high that they
were off the scale
indicating that kofton and lugovoy were
likely preparing the polonium in the
restroom somehow
at the very least they had polonium on
their hands when they went into the
restroom and it could not have come from
anyone else at that hotel
litvinenko never went into the hotel
bathroom while there
so he could not be the source of the
polonium contamination found inside
when litvinyanko arrived the pot of tea
was already on the table
and his fate was already sealed it is
not certain which man put the polonium
in the teapot but whoever did
the tea was contaminated and the few
sips that litvinienko took before giving
up on the unpleasant tasting tea
were enough to kill him when the
forensics team investigated the pine bar
checking tables cups spoons saucers
teapots and milk jugs
they found the teapot that linfinienko
was served from lugovoy and koftoon
clearly didn't care if their
assassination attempt put others in
harms away
as the polonium was spread throughout
the kitchen and dozens of unsuspecting
people exposed
polonium contamination was found in the
bar's dishwasher the floor
an ice cream scoop a chopping block
chairs the piano stool
however as dangerous as it is polonium's
tendency to stick around on items and
provide detectable radiation readings
allowed the police to connect it back to
lugofoy and koftu
the teapot that litvinenko drank from
gave off a reading of ten thousand
becquerels of polonium
and the table where the three men set
indicated radiation levels
of twenty thousand becquerels or twice
the strength it would take to kill a
person if ingested
even more damning than the evidence
found in the bar however was the
evidence found in koftun's hotel room
room 382 while the room was being
investigated the forensics team
took apart the bathroom sink inside the
sink's waste pipe they found a strange
clump that tested
for 390 000 becquerels of polonium
this clump had to have come into direct
contact with the polonium itself
rather than just traces of it with this
information the picture came into sharp
focus
after the meeting with litvinyenko
koften went to his hotel room and dumped
the rest of the polonium down the
bathroom sink
hoping to dispose of the murder weapon
once and for all however in spite of
this damning evidence koftun and lugovoy
were already back in russia
out of the reach of the british justice
system though lugovoy and koftoon were
directly responsible for his death
litvinenko blamed another loftier figure
for the decision to have him killed
he named putin in his final statement
before his death
saying this may be the time to say one
or two things to the person responsible
for my present condition
you may succeed in silencing me but that
silence comes at a price
you have shown yourself to be as
barbaric and ruthless as your most
hostile critics have claimed
you've shown yourself to have no respect
for life liberty and any civilized value
you have shown yourself to be unworthy
of your office to be unworthy of the
trust of civilized men and women
you may succeed in silencing one man but
the howl of protest from around the
world will reverberate mr putin in your
ears for the rest of your life
may god forgive you for what you've done
not only to me but to beloved russia and
its people
he also agreed to have his photograph
taken as he sat in bed
bald and gone from radiation poisoning
so that the world could see what was
done to him for the mere act of speaking
up and speaking out
even as he was sick weakened from the
poison he stared defiantly down the lens
of the camera
strong until the end the image
circulated around the world accompanying
his story and his message
when the british police named calvetoon
and lugolfoy as prime suspects in the
murder of litvinyenko
they had not been able to extradite them
from russia both men denied their
involvement in livvinienko's death
but litvinenko's account's events and
the evidence speaks for itself
even if they're never truly brought to
justice directly alexander litvinyenko
made sure that the world would know who
killed him
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