Petition calling for Investigation of murder of Ms Politkowskaya

[L'Etranger]

Please sign the petition for a complete and internationally monitored investigation of the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkowskaya!
Reporters sans Frontiers, the internationally recognized Journalists' league needs every voice before Oct 30th. Please sign the petition.

[Morgan Kane]

good idea.....

[Mespheber]

Good idea but pointless IMHO: who will investigate? Who will dare to testify? It is not the first time such murder happens. Lately, on polish tv, the director of Anna Politkowskaya's paper said that most of the time, the killer is found, a few days or weeks later, with a bullet in the head. many cases closed this way. This is Russia my friends. Da prawda.

[Talisant]

Just saw this related piece: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061119/...in_russian_spy

"British police probe ex-spy's poisoning

By TARIQ PANJA, Associated Press Writer
Sun Nov 19, 3:56 PM ET

A former Russian spy poisoned in Britain and now hospitalized under guard may have been targeted for his criticism of former colleagues and his investigation into the killing of a prominent anti-Kremlin journalist, friends and fellow dissidents said Sunday.

Col. Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent, said earlier this week that he fell ill on Nov. 1 following a meal with a contact who claimed to have details about the slaying of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist gunned down last month in Moscow.

A doctor treating Litvinenko told the British Broadcasting Corp. that tests showed he was the victim of poisoning by thallium — a toxic metal found in rat poison. He is under armed guard at University College Hospital in London.

"He's got a prospect of recovering, he has a prospect of dying," said Dr. John Henry, a clinical toxicologist who treated Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in 2004 after he was poisoned during his presidential election campaign. Henry said thallium can cause damage to the nervous system and organ failure, and that just one gram can be lethal.

In an interview with the Sunday Times before his condition worsened, Litvinenko described how he had lunch with an Italian contact who claimed to have had information on Politkovskaya's killing, which has not been solved. British news outlets identified the contact as Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic who helped investigate KGB activity in Italy during the Cold War.

"They probably thought I would be dead from heart failure by the third day," Litvinenko is quoted as saying in the Sunday Times. "I do feel very bad. I've never felt like this before — like my life is hanging on the ropes."

Police have opened an investigation into the poisoning, said a spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with force policy.

Glenn Edwards, operations manager at Itsu restaurant where the lunch took place, told The Associated Press that detectives had arrived at the restaurant on Saturday asking for close circuit television footage.

Litvinenko left Russia for Britain six years ago and has become an outspoken critic of the Kremlin. In a 2003 book, "The FSB Blows Up Russia," he accused his country's secret service agency of staging apartment-house bombings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people in Russia and sparked the second war in Chechnya.

Boris Berezovsky, the Russian dissident and tycoon who was at Litvinenko's bedside on Friday, told The Associated Press he suspects Russia's intelligence services of the poisoning.

"It's not complicated to say who fights against him," Berezovsky said in a telephone interview. "He's (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's enemy, he started to criticize him and had lots of fears."

Another friend, Alexander Goldfarb, who organized Litvinenko's emigration to Britain, said FSB agents had threatened against him in the past.

"He looks like a ghost," Goldfarb said. "He's a very fit man, he never smoked, he never drank, he would run five miles a day, but now he has lost all his hair, he has inflammation in the throat, so he cannot swallow."

Russian authorities did not immediately comment on the allegations.

Litvinenko joined the KGB in 1988 and rose to the rank of colonel in its successor, the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB. He began specializing in terrorism and organized crime in 1991, and was transferred to the FSB's most secretive department on criminal organizations in 1997.

He fled Russia and claimed asylum in Britain in November 2000, two years after publicly accusing his FSB superiors of ordering him to kill Berezovsky, at the time a powerful Kremlin insider. Berezovsky said Sunday that Litvinenko fell out with his superiors after he exposed corruption within FSB ranks.

Before he left Russia, Litvinenko was jailed for nine months awaiting trial on charges of abusing his office; he was acquitted.

Kremlin critics claim poisoning — which is extremely hard to prove — is a common Soviet-era practice that seems to have reappeared since Putin, an ex-KGB officer, became president.

"It is not a secret that poisoning has become some kind of a trademark of a secret war in Russia," Alexander Golts, political commentator with the Russian news Web site Ezhenedelny Zhurnal, told the Associated Press. "I will not take the risk of accusing the government ... but certain groups have quite overtly been eliminating people they disliked through poisoning.

"It is absolutely obvious that this story with Litvinenko fits very well into the overall picture of power struggle in Russia," he said.

Politkovskaya, who had written critically about abuses by Russian forces fighting separatists in Chechnya, fell seriously ill after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia in 2004 during the school hostage crisis in Beslan. Colleagues say she was poisoned.

Yuri Shchekochikhin, a liberal Russian lawmaker and journalist who crusaded against corruption, died in July 2003 after apparently suffering a severe allergic reaction. Colleagues suspect he was poisoned, probably in connection with his reports on a case involving customs officials and allegations that a furniture store had evaded millions of dollars in import duties.

Yushchenko, the Ukrainian president, had his face badly disfigured by what doctors said was dioxin poisoning.

In one of the most notable Cold War assassinations, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was killed in 1978 with a poison dart concealed in an umbrella. British investigators long have suspected Bulgarian agents in the slaying.

___

Associated Press reporters Maria Danilova in Moscow and Katy Fretland in London contributed to this report."

[Talisant]

Update: Litvinenko passed away today. Thallium was ruled out as the poison.
Update: 11/25/06 It is now thought that polonium-210 was used.

[Talisant]

Litvinenko's statement:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe...ent/index.html

Full statement by Alexander Litvinenko

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A former KGB spy, in a statement read after his death, accused President Vladimir Putin of orchestrating his killing.

Here is the full text of the statement dictated by Alexander Litvinenko:

I would like to thank many people. My doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are doing all they can for me; the British Police who are pursuing my case with vigor and professionalism and are watching over me and my family.

I would like to thank the British Government for taking me under their care. I am honored to be a British citizen. I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight.

I thank my wife, Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds.

But as I lie here I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like.

I think, therefore, that 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 have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or 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 have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.

[Morgan Kane]

I have much respect for the statement of a dying man but i wonder ....

I on' t understand what Poutine is winning in killing these opponents ...... When he told that the journalist had no echo in her country, he was right.

IKs it not possible that some ultra nationalists groups present in the secrt service act from their own for ideological reasons and for warning Poutine ....

[Mespheber]

I don't understand what Poutine is winning in killing these opponents ...... When he told that the journalist had no echo in her country, he was right.

She was a symbol and most of all, the paper she was working for belongs to Gorbatchev. This dude is untouchable, not the people working for him...

IKs it not possible that some ultra nationalists groups present in the secrt service act from their own for ideological reasons and for warning Poutine ....

Warning him of what? Most of all, IMHO, Putin has sent a message to the world: he warned people who'd like to escape from him what may happen to them. Secondly, he sent a message to Europe: no matter what we do, we are not able to afford any protection from him. Polonium is not something you can find in the next door shop. Even an extremist group may require connection in a high level of a governement to use it and it's too subtile for usual terrorist patterns.

My conclusion: the war has begun.

[Talisant]

I take your sense, but as to the veracity of P0l1tk0vskaya's work, that's neither here nor there, one has to ask not if it's reasonable to consider the possibility that the building was destroyed as she reports, but whether she and L1tv1nenk0 were destroyed by the regime currently in power there, and one only has to think back to the Ge0rg1 Mark0v assass1nation and possibly Yuschenk0's p0is0ning for precedent. Neither P0l1tk0vskaya nor L1tv1nenk0 will take any of the media wealth with them.

[Talisant]

Sorry, I don't take your meaning.

[Necrocute]

Well, I can see how people attempting to undermine the government with a false profit driven conspiracy theory could easily be seen as dangerous revolutionaries, thus they can be attacked.

In the west we have an ethic that allows private figures to accuse and spread lies about public figures without much of a response. I don't support anything terrible, but I am upset at how the 911 issue was totally trivialized but the mass conspiracy profiteers on the internet. The desire to kill them seems rational.

'profit driven conspiracy' is coincidentally how many conspiracy theorists would describe 11/9.
Not that I believe either side, but the u.s seems to have little respect for human life anywhere on the planet, killing its own citizens doesn't seem that far fetched :/

[Talisant]

Well, I can see how people attempting to undermine the government with a false profit driven conspiracy theory could easily be seen as dangerous revolutionaries, thus they can be attacked.

If you're suggesting that it's ok to harm, much less assassinate, people for thinking, believing, and/or saying whatever they want, then I respectfully suggest that you've got serious mental problems, but I would't condone any government, or person assassinating for your misguided stance, in fact, if I had any knowledge of premeditated harm being aimed at you, I'd tip you off so you could take necessary survival steps.

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

Talisant Posted:
If you're suggesting that it's ok to harm, much less assassinate, people for thinking, believing, and/or saying whatever they want.

Nobody will ever know what you're thinking or believing...it's when you say it that you are doomed.

[Talisant]

V.G. - You may be right about thinking and believing, but sometimes it may be what you don't say that dooms you.

The topic isn't about me.

I said, that I can understand how a government might view the attempt to spread profit making lies about it as a kind of attack. In the west it's accepted, but others might see it as an unwarrented assault mixed with treason, which it kind of is. What's the penalty for treason?

I find it amazing that an individual can sue for slander, but a president can't. It's odd.

By the way, the ability to understand the motivations of others is the exact opposite of mental illness. Nice try on the insult though.

I may have mis-read your statement, thought you were saying you condoned the action you spoke of, rather than merely understood it. I believe you're correct if you're saying something like, "One may understand the thought processes of an extreme antisocial psychopath with out implementing those same mental and physical processes and behaviours" .

My statement really was intended as an observation rather than an insult, please allow me to re-word it to something which would more accurately reflect my point, like "If you are suggesting...then I may think you have serious mental problems, but..."

Again you're right, the topic is not about any of us here except as potential signatories to a petition urging an investigation into a murder with possible political connections.