Political assassinations are as old as history. That this practice is still alive in the late 20th and early 21st century is disheartening. John F. and Robert Kennedy, Indira and Rajeev Gandhi were some of the high profile cases. But numerous other deaths of lesser known political figures and operatives go mostly unnoticed except in the local media. Some of these are blatant public acts while others involve surreptitous methods befitting of medieval conspiracies. If the old cloak and dagger stories from the archives of the KGB, the CIA and Mossad became public, they would probably read like fictional thrillers. Of the few that have become public knowledge, some are truly frightening in their secretive ruthlessness and others, especially the failed attempts, appear amusing for their outlandish impracticality.
Officially, the CIA has got out of the assassination business, although it still outsources torture. The Russian government on the other hand still appears to be actively involved in bumping off inconvenient adversaries. What is it with Russia? It seems that whoever dares to cross the official Kremlin line, gets shot, poisoned or summarily disposed off in some manner. Last month Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was investigating human rights abuses in Chechnya, was shot execution style in her apartment in Moscow. The Kremlin is widely believed to have ordered the hit.
Apart from the conventional method of shooting trouble makers, the Russian government seems almost as fond poisoning its enemies as the notorious Borgias. In 1978 in London, a dissident Bulgarian author was injected with the deadly poison ricin, using the tip of a specially modified umbrella. Russian involvement was suspected. A couple of years ago, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was horribly sickened and disfigured by a poisoning attempt, when he dared to challenge the pro-Kremlin candidate Viktor Yanukovych in the Ukrainian elections. Subsequent investigations pointed to a possible Russsian connection. Now another Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko has been poisoned and he now lies in critical condition in a London hospital. Interestingly enough, the would be assassin lured Litvinenko with the promise of providing compromising documents about the murder of Anna Politkovskaya.
"A Russian security service defector is in a critical condition at a London hospital after being poisoned in a plot worthy of a Cold War novel by John le Carré.
Alexander Litvinenko, a former lieutenant-colonel with Russia’s FSB security service and a staunch critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime, fled to Britain in 2000, saying he feared for his life. Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police said he was in a "serious but stable" condition after tests confirmed traces of rat poison called thallium in his body.
The 44-year-old defector, who was sentenced in absentia for treason in Russia, was taken to hospital when he began vomiting violently. His hair has also fallen out and it is understood his kidneys have been damaged by the effects of the dose of thallium. The heavy metal, which is hard to obtain in the UK, damages the nervous system and lungs. Colourless and odourless, it is used in rat poisons in the Middle East.
Mr Litvinenko has told associates he became ill after lunching in a sushi restaurant in London on 1 November, the sixth anniversary of his arrival in Britain. He gained full British citizenship last month The defector’s lunch companion was an Italian information-peddler called Mario Scaramella, who is alleged to have links with Russian intelligence. He is said to have given Mr Litvinenko documents purporting to show that Russian agents were implicated in the murder of the Russian investigative reporter, Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot in Moscow last month."
The rest of the story here.
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