60 minutes rewind
questions continue to surround the role
russia may have played in president
trump's election last fall and about the
president's professed admiration for
vladimir putin's skills as a strong
leader
what the president doesn't talk about is
the unfortunate fate that stalks some of
putin's most prominent critics
they have been victims of unsolved
shootings suspicious suicides and
poisonings
tonight the story of one of them
vladimir kara mirza was an opposition
activist on the front lines protesting
putin's policies organizing
demonstrations and town hall meetings he
knew he was on a dangerous mission
when we met him last year he told us
that one day in may 2015 he learned just
how dangerous
i was in a work meeting with my
colleagues in moscow when i suddenly
started to feel really sick and i went
within about 20 minutes from feeling
completely normal to feeling like a very
sick man and i don't remember anything
for the next month you were out for a
month i was in a coma for a week and i
don't remember anything for a month and
had basically a cascade of all my major
life organs failing one after another
just switching off you know the lungs
the heart the kidneys he was shuttled
from hospital to hospital in moscow for
two days as doctors frantically tried to
figure out what was wrong with him i was
at one point connected i think to eight
different artificial life support
machines and doctors told my wife that
it's only gonna be about five percent
chance
that i'll survive but he beat the odds
when we spoke with him last year he'd
been recovering for a year but he was
still walking with a limp from nerve
damage so what happened well it was some
kind of a very strong toxin we don't
know what it was because you know with
these things as as people who know more
about this than i do explain to me you
basically have to know exactly what
you're testing for in order to find it
so they never found the exact compound
they never did it was until the fourth
day and after he'd been on a dialysis
machine that blood was drawn and sent to
a toxicology lab in france
it found heavy metals in his blood but
no specific toxin
still karemurza maintains that he was
poisoned i have absolutely no doubt that
this was a
deliberate poisoning that it was
intended to kill because as i mentioned
already my the doctors told my wife that
it's about a five percent chance of
survival and when it's that kind of
percentage it's not too scary it's to
kill can you be sure that what happened
to you was directed by mr putin well of
that i have no idea that i don't know
the precise circumstances i don't know
the who or the how um but i do know why
vladimir
in recent years quite a few of putin's
enemies have perished by swallowing
things they shouldn't have in 2006
russian spy turned kremlin critic
alexander litvinenko drank tea laced
with polonium-210
two years earlier the ukrainian
politician victor yushenko had somehow
ingested dioxin he survived but was
disfigured
but what would the motive be in the case
of the critic vladimir karamerza
cambridge educated he was for years a
washington-based reporter for a russian
tv station
so he was well connected and had perfect
english which he used to incessantly
criticize the regime on the
international stage a government that is
based on genuine support
does not need to jail its opponents
as if his outspokenness wasn't enough to
anger the kremlin he made matters worse
for himself when he joined forces with
this man it's death
if you cross the putin regime bill
browder was for years the largest
foreign investor in russia and putin's
champion but he turned into a dogged
adversary when his russian tax attorney
sergey magnitsky blew the whistle on
alleged large-scale theft by government
officials we discovered massive
corruption
of the putin regime sergey exposed it
testified against the officials involved
he was subsequently arrested
put in pre-trial detention
tortured for 358 days and killed at the
age of 37.
browder was so outraged he joined with
vladimir karimerza to lobby the u.s
congress for a law targeting those
responsible for that death and other
human rights violations they succeeded
the magnitsky act passed in 2012. it's
the first law that sanctions individual
russians 44 so far the magnitsky act is
designed to
sanction to freeze the assets
and and ban the visas
for people who commit these types of
crimes
in russia they can't get to their money
which may be stashed in the united
states and so vladimir putin is
extremely angry that the magnitsky act
was going to be passed he was even
angrier when it got passed and he was
even angrier when people started getting
added names started getting added to the
magnitsky list one reason vladimir
karimerza is convinced he was targeted
is because six people connected to the
magnitsky case as he was have ended up
dead
one of them was boris nemtsov a leader
of russia's opposition and kara mirza's
partner in lobbying for the magnitsky
act on the 27th of february 2015
he was killed by five bullets in the
back as he was walking home as he always
did out in the open without bodyguards
this was an assassination in some of the
deaths proving there was foul play has
been a challenge
take the case of this russian banker who
came forward with incriminating
documents related to the magnitsky case
alexander paraplichni was a
whistleblower at the age of 44 he went
jogging outside his home in surrey
outside of london and dropped dead the
police deemed it a
unsuspicious natural death well they did
look for poison they just couldn't find
any they did a very first round
toxicology screen
they they didn't find anything on the
first run through
detecting poison can be extremely
difficult and there's a reason
this cold war cia memo reveals that the
soviets ran a laboratory for poisons in
a large and super-secret installation
known as the chamber to test
undetectable compounds
in the case of the banker in london the
coroner wasn't willing to give up he
ordered more tests and three years later
it was revealed in court that an exotic
toxin was found with the help of an
authority on flowers a small sample of
his stomach contents was sent to a
botanical garden
outside of london and one of the
scientists found a compound called
gelsemian elegance which is a chinese
herb they call it the heartbreak grass
and it causes a person to die
unexpectedly without explanation still
there's no direct evidence of a kremlin
connection but the list of those who've
come to die unexpectedly after running
afoul of mr putin is long
political opponents and human rights
lawyers have been shot
overly inquisitive reporters have
perished in mysterious plane crashes
or by car bombs by poison or gunfire
journalist anna polokovskaya was
poisoned and shot then there are enemies
who kill themselves one by hanging one
by stabbing himself to death with two
knives and one by tying himself to a
chair and jumping into a swimming pool
some of putin's opponents are in prison
others forced out of the country like
mikhail kortakowski probably putin's
most famous living critic
are you afraid for your own life
for a period of over 10 years vladimir
putin had ample opportunity to make a
decision about putting an end to my life
in a very easy way just by snapping his
fingers
and today
it's a little bit more difficult
koderkovsky was once the richest man in
russia until he took to opposing putin
he was put on trial his oil company
confiscated and then thrown in prison
for 10 years
home is now london where he funds a
russian pro-democracy movement and this
is where the plot thickens because one
of his senior organizers on the ground
in russia is none other than vladimir
karamerza
there are people who say that what's
happened to karamurza is a message to
you
a message to you to back off
you know for ten years i was receiving
lots of messages from our authorities of
various sorts
and some of these messages were rather
unpleasant concerning my physical
well-being
but the authorities saw i ignored these
messages i would like to believe that
they have not forgotten
the story will continue after this
in 2015 once vladimir karamerza was
stabilized he was flown to washington dc
to continue treatment near his wife
yevgenya and their three children who
live in the u.s for their safety but as
soon as kara merza got better he was
itching to go back to russia i think
what my husband believes in
will always outweigh the fear even for
you of course i'm terrified
but at the same time
you know i married the guy 13 years ago
and i knew what i was getting into you
know i think there's nothing better this
regime the putin regime would like us to
do than to give up and run away and
we're not going to give them that
pleasure even after being poisoned it's
our country we have to fight for it he
told us this in june
he went back immediately after even
though threats against him had
intensified
like this video posted on instagram
putting him in the crosshairs of a
sniper rifle he was continuing his
opposition work when just last month
all of a sudden
he begins
experiencing this very elevated heart
rate his blood pressure drops very low
he begins sweating
and he has trouble breathing
his wife thinks her husband was attacked
the same way as before the first time he
had been dragged from one hospital to
another to yet another while they were
trying to establish the cause
this time he was taken directly to the
hospital to the same medical team that
had treated him in 2015 and the moment
they saw him they knew what they were
dealing with and what do you think
happened the russian doctor's official
diagnosis is an acute intoxication by an
undetermined substance
which is poisoning
this happened just as washington was
raising questions about president
trump's relationship with mr putin so
last month vladimir karamerza became an
issue on the senate floor vladimir
has once again paid the price for his
gallantry and integrity politicians on
both sides of the aisle spoke out
against the apparent poisoning but the
trump administration has not remarkably
kara mirza survived again less than
three weeks after he collapsed he was
flown to the u.s and two weeks later we
spoke to him for a second time you look
pretty good how are you actually feeling
well you're very kind i don't think i
feel as good as i look he said he's
recovering faster because his doctors
knew just what to do this time the
kremlin has denied any involvement and
since no poison has been found yet
supporters of putin questioned whether
he was really poisoned at all
we've been told that we are very naive
naive journalist gullible
and that this whole thing is concocted
by the opposition
to fool the american people into
thinking that that regime would do such
a thing to those who say that this is a
plot i honestly and i mean this
sincerely i wish to never have to
experience what i had experienced twice
in the last two years when you're trying
to breathe and you cannot when you feel
your organs shutting down giving up on
you one after another and when you feel
the life coming out of your body in the
next few hours and you don't remember
anything for the next month and then for
the next year you're trying to relearn
how to walk how to use cutlery you know
how to talk to your kids again i wish
these people who tell you these things
never have to experience i honestly
sincerely do
you were
very very sick and went back
now are you finished
are you saying i'm not going back in oh
god no of course not i'm frustrated i'm
going to go back of course i will
absolutely go back to russia i'm russian
this is my country and i believe in what
i do
and what my colleagues do there are many
of us
but not many have almost died twice many
unfortunately have died i'm the
fortunate one i'm still here i'm still
talking to you many of my colleagues
cannot do that