(RIP Pamela Mastropietro) Il paese e la comunità nigeriana (in Italia) sono ancora in shock sul fatto accaduto a Macerata poi arriva ‘ la confusione’ sciocco da un criminologo che crea solo confusione, paura e deviare l’inquirente che si occupano del fatto con tesi antropologica estratto dai libri e studi settecentesco.
Con tutti i rispetti, qualcuno puo spiegare il nostro criminologo Dott Merluzzo che il comportamento,la cultura, l’usanza, le tendenze e la criminalità sono anche in evoluzioni, soprattutto nella società giovanile come quella nigeriana. Quindi, dopo che ho sentito il suo clip e letto il suo articolo nel giornale mi ha confermato che l’italia come un ‘paese vecchia’(modo positivo) continue ad usare vecchi metodi e gente vecchia per risolvere problemi nuovi. Purtroppo questo ci farà solo male, perdita di tempo e girare sempre intorni ai problemi.
La tesi che il criminologo ha presentato sulla cosiddetta ‘mafia Nigeriana’ era interessante, ma di 60% solo storie e tesi antiquariato come i libri che ha letto, e non indirizzano a capire precisamento il fenomeno e le tendenze attuale del giovane delinquente nigeriano soprattutto qui in italia.
Nel 1997 tra la prima e seconda laurea ho fatto dei studi e tesi all'università (a Roma) sulla migrazione nigeriana in Italia e la criminalità nigeriana in europa e posso dire che oggi solo 10 anni dopo le cose sono quasi completamente cambiate perché la situazioni,motivazioni e ‘tipologia’ delle persone che arrivano sono cambiati, quindi ci sono grande mutazione nel modo di agire.
Un altro esempio molto importante delle sue ommissioni :ci sono due tasselli nel grande mosaico che ne lui ne nessuno menziona sul fatto attuale perche non e' scritto nel nessun libro,neanche i criminali o delinquente nigeriani in nigeria lo sanno perché sono combinazioni dell’opportunità e possibilità scoperto nell'attuale paese e cultura ospitante purtroppo.
La comunità nigerian come tutte le comunità migrante continua ad augurare che lo stato con i giusti apparati continua ad essergli vicino per aiutarla a combattere i malviventi tra loro , perché come tanto non sanno i primi ad essere colpiti dai delinquenti sono i connazionali, contrario al fenomeno di fare tutto l’erba un fascio.
L’italia produce molti antibiotici e sappiamo tutti la procedura, ma nel fatto sociale non possiamo applicare questo senso scientifico? Finché contiamo a studiare una comunità cha abita proprio sotto la scala dai libri scritto da un altro persone che abita 10 mila km non li conoscere mai bene i rapporti saranno sempre difficili.
Alexander Litvinenko: the man who solved his own murder
This week, the inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko will deliver its findings. The former Russian spy was poisoned with a cup of tea in a London hotel. Working with Scotland Yard detectives, as he lay dying, he traced the lethal substance to a former comrade in the Russian secret service
Alexander Litvinenko in the intensive care unit of University College
Hospital, London, on November 20, 2006. He died three days later.
Photograph: Natasja Weitsz/Getty Images Contributor
The Millennium hotel is an unusual spot for a murder. It overlooks Grosvenor Square, and is practically next door to the heavily guarded US embassy, where, it is rumoured, the CIA has its station on the fourth floor. A statue of Franklin D Roosevelt – wearing a large cape and holding a stick – dominates the north side of the square. In 2011 another statue would appear: that of the late US president Ronald Reagan. An inscription hails Reagan’s contribution to world history and his “determined intervention to end the cold war”. A friendly tribute from Mikhail Gorbachev reads: “With President Reagan, we travelled the world from confrontation to cooperation.” The quotes would seem mordantly ironic in the light of events that took place just around the corner, and amid Vladimir Putin’s apparent attempt to turn the clock back to 1982, when the former KGB boss Yuri Andropov – the secret policeman’s secret policeman – was in charge of a doomed empire known as the Soviet Union. Next to the inscriptions is a sandy-coloured chunk of masonry. It is a piece of the Berlin Wall, retrieved from the east side. Reagan, the monument says, defeated communism. This was an enduring triumph for the west, democratic values, and for free societies everywhere.
Five hundred metres away is Grosvenor Street. It was here, in mid-October 2006, that two Russian assassins had tried to murder someone, unsuccessfully. The hitmen were Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun. Their target was Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer in Russia’s FSB spy agency. Litvinenko had fled Moscow in 2000. In exile in Britain he had become Putin’s most ebullient and needling critic. He was a writer and journalist. And – from 2003 onwards – a British agent, employed by MI6 as an expert on Russian organised crime.
Latterly, Litvinenko had been supplying Her Majesty’s spooks and their Spanish counterparts with hair-raising information about the Russian mafia in Spain. The mafia had extensive contacts with senior Russian politicians. The trail apparently led to the president’s office, and dated back to the 1990s when Putin, then aide to St Petersburg’s mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, worked closely with gangsters. In a week or so, Litvinenko was to testify before a Spanish prosecutor. Hence, it appeared, the Kremlin’s frantic efforts to kill him.
The men from Moscow were carrying what Kovtun confessed to a friend was “a very expensive poison”. About its properties he knew little. The poison was polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope, tiny, invisible, undetectable. Ingested, it was fatal. The polonium had originated at a nuclear reactor in the Urals and a production line in the Russian town of Sarov. A secret FSB laboratory, the agency’s “research institute”, then converted it into a dinkily portable weapon.
Lugovoi and Kovtun, however, were rubbish assassins. The quality of Moscow’s hired killers had slipped since the glory days of the KGB. Their first attempt, in a Grosvenor Street boardroom, had not worked. They had lured Litvinenko to a business meeting, where – the radiation stain later showed – they had tipped polonium into his cup or glass. But Litvinenko did not touch his drink. As of 1 November 2006, he was stubbornly alive.
Even modern CCTV has its limitations. Some parts of the Millennium were not covered by it – as Lugovoi, an expert in surveillance, and a former Kremlin bodyguard, would have noticed. One camera was fixed above the reception desk. Its footage shows the check-in counter; a bank of three computer screens; uniformed hotel staff. In the left of the picture is a part view of the foyer. There are two white leather sofas and a chair. Another camera – you wouldn’t notice it, unless you were looking – records the steps leading up to the lavatories.
The hotel has two ground-floor bars accessed from the foyer. There is a large restaurant and cafe. And the smaller Pine Bar immediately on the left as you enter through a revolving door from the street. The bar is a cosy wood-panelled affair. Three bay windows look out onto the square. In CCTV terms, the Pine Bar is a security black hole. It has no cameras; its guests are invisible.
On the evening of 31 October, camera 14 recorded this: at 20:04 a man dressed in a black leather jacket and mustard yellow jumper approaches the front desk. On either side of him are two young women. They have long, groomed blonde hair: his daughters. Another figure wanders up from the sofas. He is a strikingly tall, chunky-looking bloke wearing a padded black jacket and what resembles a hand-knitted Harry Potter scarf. The scarf is red and blue – the colours of Moscow’s CSKA football club.
The video captures the moment the Lugovois checked in – on this, his third frantic trip to London in three weeks, Lugovoi arrived with his entire family. He came from Moscow with his wife Svetlana, daughter Galina, eight-year-old son Igor, and friend Vyacheslav Sokolenko – the guy with the scarf. At the hotel, Lugovoi met his other daughter Tatiana. She had arrived from Moscow a day earlier with her boyfriend Maxim Bejak. The family party was due to watch CSKA Moscow play Arsenal in the Champions League the following evening. Like Lugovoi, Sokolenko was ex-KGB. But Sokolenko was not, British detectives would conclude, a murderer.
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CCTV shows Kovtun arriving at the Millennium at 08.32 the next day – a diminutive figure carrying a black bag over one shoulder. The events of the next few hours were to become infamous – with Litvinenko the fated victim, the Russian state an avenging god, the media a sort of overexcited Greek chorus. What actually took place was a piece of improvisation that might easily have misfired. Lugovoi and Kovtun had decided to lure Litvinenko to a further meeting. But the evidence suggests that they had still not figured out how exactly they were going to kill him.
Litvinenko had first met Lugovoi in Russia in the 1990s. Both were members of the oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s entourage. Later, while living in exile in London, Berezovsky became Litvinenko’s mercurial patron. In 2005, Lugovoi recontacted Litvinenko and suggested they work together, advising western firms wanting to invest in Russia. At 11.41am, Lugovoi called Litvinenko on his mobile. He suggested a meeting. Why didn’t Litvinenko join him later that day at the Millennium? Litvinenko said yes; the plot was on.
Scotland Yard would later precisely fix Litvinenko’s movements on the afternoon of 1 November: a bus from his home in Muswell Hill in north London; the tube to Piccadilly Circus; a 3pm lunch with his Italian associate Mario Scaramella in the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly. In between, he fielded several calls from Lugovoi, who was becoming increasingly importunate. Lugovoi called Litvinenko again at 3.40pm. He told Litvinenko to “hurry up”. He had, he said, to leave imminently to watch the football.
Lugovoi would tell British detectives that he arrived at the Millennium at 4pm. The CCTV shows that he was lying: half an hour earlier, at 3.32pm, Lugovoi appears at the front desk and asks for directions to the gents. Another camera, number four, records him walking up the stairs from the foyer. The image is striking. Lugovoi seems preoccupied. He is unusually pale, grim, grey-visaged. His left hand is concealed in a jacket pocket. Two minutes later, he emerges. The camera offers an unflattering close-up of his bald spot.
Then, at 3.45pm, Kovtun repeats the same procedure, asking for directions, vanishing into the men’s toilets, reappearing three minutes later. He is a slight figure. What were the pair doing there? Washing their hands, having set the polonium trap? Or preparing the crime, a heinous one, in the sanctuary of one of the cubicles?
Tests were to show massive alpha radiation contamination in the second cubicle on the left – 2,600 counts per second on the door, 200 on the flush handle. Further sources of polonium were found on and below the gents’ hand-dryer, at over 5,000 counts per second. There was what scientists called “full-scale deflection” – readings so high they were off the scale.
The multiplex system shows someone else arriving at 15.59 and 41 seconds – a fit-looking individual, wearing a blue denim jacket with a fawn collar. He is on his mobile phone. This is Litvinenko at the blurred edge of the picture; he calls Lugovoi from the hotel lobby to tell him that he has arrived. The CCTV tells us little beyond this. Apart from one important detail. Litvinenko never visits the hotel bathroom. He is not the source of the polonium; it is his Russian companions-turned-executioners who bring it with them to London, in this, their second poisoning attempt.
* * *
The Soviet Union had a long tradition of bumping off its enemies. They included Leon Trotsky (ice-pick in the head), Ukrainian nationalists (poisons, exploding cakes) and the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov (ricin pellet fired from an umbrella, on London’s Waterloo Bridge). There was a spectrum. It went from killings that were demonstrative, to those where the KGB’s fingerprints were nowhere to be found, however hard you looked. Such murders were justified by what you might call Leninist ethics: they were necessary to defend the Bolshevik revolution, a noble experiment.
Under Boris Yeltsin these exotic killings mostly stopped. Moscow’s secret poisons lab, set up by Lenin in 1917, was mothballed. After 2000 though, with Putin in the Kremlin, such Soviet-style operations quietly resumed. Critics of Russia’s new president had an uncanny habit of ending up ... well, dead. In power, Putin steered the country in an increasingly authoritarian direction, snuffing out most sources of opposition and dissent. The president’s fellow KGB comrades, once subordinate to the Communist party, were now in sole charge.
The murders of journalists and human rights activists could not be explained in terms of protecting socialism. Rather, the state was now synonymous with something else: the personal financial interests of Putin and his friends.
As an FSB officer in the 1990s, Litvinenko had been shocked to discover how thoroughly organised crime had penetrated Russia’s security organs. In his view, criminal ideology had replaced communist ideology. He was the first to describe Putin’s Russia as a mafia state, in which the roles of government, organised crime and the spy agencies had grown indistinguishable.
While serving with the FSB, where his role was akin to that of a detective, Litvinenko had also perfected his observation skills. It was part of his basic training. How to describe the bad guys: their height, build, hair colour and distinguishing features. What they were wearing. Any jewellery. How old. Smoker or non-smoker. And of course their conversation – from the major stuff, such as admissions of guilt, down to trivial details. For example, who offered whom a cup of tea?
When DI Brent Hyatt of Scotland Yard later interviewed Litvinenko, the Russian gave him a full and – in the circumstances, remarkable – account of his meeting with Lugovoi and Kovtun in the Pine Bar. Litvinenko said that Lugovoi approached him in the foyer from the left side and said: “Let’s go, we are sitting there.” He followed Lugovoi into the bar; Lugovoi had already ordered drinks. Lugovoi sat with his back to the wall; Litvinenko was diagonally across from him on a chair. There were glasses on the table – but no bottles. And “mugs and a teapot”.
As Lugovoi knew, Litvinenko did not drink alcohol. Moreover he was hard-up and reluctant to spend any money of his own in a fancy establishment. The barman, Norberto Andrade, approached Litvinenko from behind, and asked him: “Are you going to have anything?” Lugovoi repeated the question and said: “Would you like anything?”. Litvinenko said he did not want anything.
Litvinenko told Hyatt: “He [Lugovoi] said, ‘OK, well we’re going to leave now anyway, so there is still some tea left here, if you want to you can have some.’ And then the waiter went away, or I think Andrei asked for a clean cup and he brought it. He left and when there was a cup, I poured some tea out of the teapot, although there was only a little left in the bottom and it made just half a cup. Maybe about 50 grammes.
“I swallowed several times but it was a green tea with no sugar and it was already cold, by the way. I didn’t like it for some reason, well, almost cold tea with no sugar, and I didn’t drink it any more. Maybe in total I swallowed three or four times.” Litvinenko said he didn’t finish the cup. Hyatt: The pot with the tea in it was already there? Litvinenko: Yes. Hyatt: How many mugs were on the table when you came in? Litvinenko: I think three or four cups. Hyatt: And did Andrei drink any more from the pot in your presence? Litvinenko: No. Hyatt: OK, and what happened next? Litvinenko: Then he said Vadim [Kovtun] is coming here now ... either Vadim or Volodia, I can’t remember. I saw him for the second time in my life. Hyatt: What happened next? Litvinenko: Next Volodia [Kovtun] took a place at the table on my side, across from Andrei.
The three men discussed their meeting scheduled for the following day at the private security firm Global Risk. In previous months, Litvinenko had tried to supplement his £2,000-a-month MI6 salary by doing due diligence reports for British firms keen to invest in Russia. The bar was crowded, Litvinenko said. He felt a strong antipathy towards Kovtun. It was only their second encounter. There was something strange about him, Litvinenko thought – as if he were in the midst of some personal torment. Litvinenko: Volodia [Kovtun] was – seemed to be – very depressed, as if he was very much hungover. He apologised. He said that he hadn’t slept for the whole night, that he had just flown in from Hamburg and he wanted to sleep very much and he couldn’t stand it any more. But I think he is either an alcoholic or a drug addict. He is a very unpleasant type. Hyatt: Volodia, how did he know to come to the table? Did Andrei contact him and ask him to come and join you, or was there already an arrangement for him to join you?” Litvinenko: No … he [Kovtun], I think he knew in advance. Even possibly they had been sitting before this and maybe he went up to his room. Hyatt: Just going back to when you had some tea, you didn’t ask the waiter for a drink. It was mentioned that there was some tea left. How insistent was Andrei that you have a drink, or was he indifferent? Was he saying, “Go on, go on, have some?” Or didn’t he care? Litvinenko: He said it like that, you know, “If you would like something, order something for yourself, but we’re going to be leaving soon. If, if you want some tea, then there is some left here, you can have some of this...”
I could have ordered a drink myself, but he kind of presented in such a way that it’s not really need to order. I don’t like when people pay for me but in such an expensive hotel, forgive me, I don’t have enough money to pay for that.” Hyatt: Did you drink any of the tea in the presence of Volodia? Litvinenko: No, I drank the tea only when Andrei was sitting opposite me. In Volodia’s presence, I wasn’t drinking it .... I didn’t like that tea. Hyatt: And after you drank from that pot, did Andrei or Volodia drink anything from that pot? Litvinenko: No, definitely. 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.
There is no evidence to say whether it was Kovtun – an ex‑waiter, who once worked in a Hamburg restaurant – or Lugovoi who put polonium in the teapot. From Litvinenko’s testimony, it is clear that this was a joint criminal enterprise. Lugovoi would subsequently explain that he could not recall what drinks he had ordered in the Pine Bar. And that Litvinenko had insisted upon their meeting, to which he had reluctantly assented.
Subsequently, police tracked down Lugovoi’s bar bill. The order was: three teas, three Gordon’s gin, three tonics, one champagne cocktail, one Romeo y Julieta cigar No 1, one Gordon’s gin. The tea came to £11.25; the total bill £70.60. Lugovoi was a man who murdered with a certain breezy style.
By this point, Lugovoi and Kovtun must have concluded that their poisoning operation had worked. Litvinenko had drunk the green tea. Not much, admittedly. But, he had drunk. Surely, enough? The meeting lasted 20 minutes. Lugovoi gazed at his watch. He said he was expecting his wife. She appeared in the foyer and, as if on cue, waved her hand, and mouthed: “Let’s go, let’s go.” Lugovoi got up to greet her, and left Litvinenko and Kovtun sitting together at the table.
There was one final, scarcely believable scene. According to Litvinenko, Lugovoi came back to the bar accompanied by his eight-year-old son Igor. Lugovoi introduced him to Litvinenko. He said to Igor: “This is Uncle Sasha, shake his hand.”
Igor was a good boy. He obediently shook Litvinenko’s hand, the same hand that by now was pulsing with radiation. When police examined Litvinenko’s jacket they found massive contamination on the sleeve – Litvinenko had picked up and drunk the tea with his right hand. The party, plus Litvinenko, left the bar. The Lugovoi family and Sokolenko went off to the match. Kovtun declined to go, declaring: “I’m very tired, I want to sleep.”
Forensic experts would test the entire bar area, the tables, and crockery. They examined 100 teapots, as well as cups, spoons, saucers, milk jugs. Litvinenko’s white ceramic teapot was not difficult to discover – it gave off readings of 100,000 becquerels per centimetre squared. The biggest reading came from the spout. (The teapot was put in the dishwasher afterwards and unknowingly reused for subsequent customers.) The table where they sat registered 20,000 becquerels. Half that, ingested, was enough to kill a person.
Polonium was a miasma, a creeping fog. It was found inside the dishwasher, on the floor, till, a coffee strainer handle. There were traces on bottles of Martini and Tia Maria behind the bar, the ice-cream scoop, a chopping board. It turned up on chairs – with large alpha radiation readings from where the three Russians sat – and the piano stool. Whoever sent Lugovoi and Kovtun to London must have known of the risks to others. Apparently they didn’t care.
The most crucial piece of evidence was discovered several floors
above the Pine Bar, in Kovtun’s room, 382. When police forensic teams
took apart the bathroom sink they found a mangled clump of debris. The
debris was stuck in the sediment trap of the sink’s waste pipe. Tests on
the clump showed it contained 390,000 becquerels of polonium. The
levels were so high that they could only have come from polonium itself.
After
laying the poison in Litvinenko’s teapot, Kovtun had gone back upstairs
to his room. There, in the privacy of the bathroom, he had tipped the
rest of the liquid solution down the sink. No one else – other than
Lugovoi and Sokolenko – had access to the room. Police concluded that
Kovtun had knowingly handled the murder weapon, and afterwards got rid
of it. It was an intentional act of disposal.
The science was
objective, conclusive and utterly damning. It had the simplicity of
undeniable fact. Back in Moscow, in numerous subsequent interviews,
Kovtun would claim innocence. He was never able to explain away this
piece of evidence: why was the polonium in his bathroom?
Polonium was a miasma, a creeping fog. It was found inside the dishwasher, on the floor, till, a coffee strainer handle
The
Russian operation to murder Litvinenko would have had a codename -–
thus far unknown. It could finally be marked down as a success. It was
the sixth anniversary of Litvinenko’s arrival in Britain: 1 November
2000. He did not know it yet, but he was dying. The substance used to
kill him had been chosen because the killers believed it could not be
detected. The plan was working. From this point on nothing – not even
the most gifted medical team from the heavens – could save him.
* * *
Seventeen days later, Litvinenko
was lying in hospital, mortally ill. His case had baffled medical
staff. Eventually, they had alighted on a diagnosis of thallium
poisoning. This late stage saw the arrival of Scotland Yard.
To
begin with, the British police had a confusing picture – a poisoned
Russian who spoke poor English; a baffling plot involving visitors from
Moscow; and a swirl of potential crime scenes. Two detectives, DI Brent
Hyatt and DS Chris Hoar, from the Met’s specialist crime unit,
interviewed Litvinenko in the critical care unit on the 16th floor of
University College Hospital.He had been admitted as Edwin Redwald Carter, his British pseudonym.He
is a “significant witness” in the investigation. There are 18
interviews, lasting eight hours and 57 minutes in total. These
conversations stretch out over three days, from the early hours of 18
November until shortly before 9pm on 20 November.
The interview
transcripts were kept secret for eight-and-a-half years, hidden in
Scotland Yard’s case file, and stamped with the word “Restricted”.
Revealed in 2015, they are remarkable documents. They are, in effect,
unique witness statements taken from a ghost. But Litvinenko is no
ordinary ghost: he is a ghost who uses his final reserves of energy to
solve a chilling murder mystery – his own.
Litvinenko was a highly
experienced detective. He knew how investigations worked. He was
fastidious too: neatly collating case materials in a file, always
employing a hole‑punch. In the interviews, he sets out before the police
in dispassionate terms the evidence of who might have poisoned him. He
acknowledges: “I cannot blame these people directly because I have no
proof.”
He is an ideal witness – good with descriptions, heights,
details. He draws up a list of suspects. There are three of them: the
Italian Mario Scaramella; his business partner Andrei Lugovoi, and
Lugovoi’s unpleasant Russian companion, whose name Litvinenko struggles
to remember, and to whom he refers wrongly as “Volodia” or “Vadim”.
Hyatt
begins recording at eight minutes after midnight on 18 November. He
introduces himself and his colleague DS Hoar. Litvinenko gives his own
name and address.
Hoar then says: “Thank you very much for that,
Edwin. Edwin, we’re here investigating an allegation that somebody has
poisoned you in an attempt to kill you.” Hoar says that doctors have
told him Edwin is suffering from “extremely high levels of thallium” and
“that is the cause of this illness”.
He continues: “Can I ask you to tell us what you think has happened to you and why?”
Medical
staff had pre-briefed Hoar that Litvinenko spoke good English. Hoar
discovered that was not true. After this first conversation, an
interpreter was brought in.
Litvinenko is still able to give a
full account of his career in the FSB, his deepening conflict with the
agency. He also talks of his “good relationship” with the Russian
journalist Anna Politkovskaya,
another Putin enemy, and her fear that she was in danger. In spring
2006, they met in a branch of Cafe Nero in London. Litvinenko asked her
what was wrong. She told him: “Alexander, I’m very afraid,” and said
that every time she said goodbye to her daughter and son she had the
feeling she was looking at them “for the last time”. He urged her to
leave Russia. She said she could not – her parents were old, she had
kids. In October 2006, Politkovskaya was shot dead in the stairwell of
her Moscow apartment.
Politkovskaya’s murder left Litvinenko
“very, very shocked”, he says, adding: “I lost of a lot of my friends”,
and that human life in Russia is cheap He tells detectives about his
speech in the Frontline Club, a press club in London, the previous
month, in which he accused Putin publicly of having Politkovskaya
killed.
From time to time, the interviews stop: the tape runs out;
nurses come in to administer drugs; Litvinenko, suffering from
diarrhoea, has to go to the bathroom. Mostly, though, he battles on. He
tells Hyatt: “Meeting you is very important for my case.” The journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a friend of Litvinenko, was shot dead in 2000
It
is the two Russians who are at the centre of his suspicions. Litvinenko
recounts his meeting with them at the Millennium. He says that he had
not been to the hotel before and that he had to find it on a map. He
insists this “special” information remain secret – not to be made public
or shared with his wife Marina. “These people, it’s interesting. Most
interesting,” he muses.
With time running out, Litvinenko is working furiously to solve the conundrum. The transcript reads: Carter [Litvinenko]: Only these three people can poison me. Hyatt: These three. Carter: Mario, Vadim [Kovtun] and Andrei.
There
are moments when it appears that there are three officers hard at work:
Hyatt, Hoar and Litvinenko, the punctilious ex-cop. After four or five
hours of interviews, the case begins to cohere. The investigation gains
new momentum. Information is passed back to SO15, the counter-terrorist
command at Scotland Yard, headed by Det Supt Clive Timmons.
Litvinenko
explains that his most important papers are kept at home, in the lower
shelf of a large cupboard. The papers include critical information on
Putin, and the people around him, from newspapers and other sources, as
well as background on Russian criminal gangs. He gives the police his
email password and bank account. He tells them where they can find
receipts for two Orange sim cards, bought for £20 from a store in Bond
Street – in a black leather wallet on his bedside table. Litvinenko
explains that he gave one of the sims to Lugovoi; they used these secret
numbers to communicate. He hands over his diary.
Ever helpful,
Litvinenko phones his wife and asks her to locate a photo of Lugovoi at
their home. Hyatt suspends the interview to secure the photograph.
Lugovoi is now a prime suspect. Litvinenko describes him like this:
“Andrei is a pure European, and even he looks a little bit like me, sort
of. The same type as like me ... I am 1m 77cm – 1m 78cm, so he is
probably 1m 76cm. He is two years younger than me, light hair.” He has a
small, “almost invisible” bald patch.
The transcript reads: Hyatt:
Edwin, do you consider Andrei to be a friend of yours, or a business
associate? What, how do you describe your relationship with Andrei? Carter: ... He is not a friend. He is a business partner.
At
the end of his second day of interviews, on 19 November, Litvinenko
describes getting a lift home with a Chechen friend named Akhmed
Zakayev: “Now the paradoxical thing is that I was still feeling very
well but then somehow I had some kind of feeling that something might
happen to me in the nearest future. Maybe subconsciously.” The
detectives turn off the tape. It is a full and frank account of events
leading up to Litvinenko’s poisoning – with one exception. During these
two days he does not mention his secret life and his job working for
British intelligence. It is only the next day that he speaks of his
meeting on 31 October with his MI6 handler “Martin”, in the basement
cafe of the Waterstone’s bookshop on Piccadilly. Litvinenko is chary –
evidently reluctant to discuss his undercover role. Carter:
On 31 October at about 4pm, I had a meeting arranged with a person
about whom I wouldn’t really like to talk here because I have some
commitments. You can contact that person on that long telephone number
which I gave you. Hyatt: Did you meet with that person, Edwin? Carter: Yes. Hyatt: Edwin, it could be absolutely vital that you tell us who that person is. Carter: You can call him and he will tell you.
The
interview abruptly stops. It’s 5.16pm. Hyatt dials the long telephone
number, reaches “Martin”, and tells him that Litvinenko is gravely ill
in hospital, the victim of an apparent poisoning by two mysterious
Russians.
Police investigate Litvinenko’s poisoning at the Millennium hotel in central London. Photograph: Alessia
Pierdomenico/ReuterIt
appears to be the first time that MI6 – an organisation famed for its
professionalism – learns of Litvinenko’s plight. Litvinenko, of course,
was not a full-time employee. But he was a salaried informant, with his
own encrypted mobile phone and MI6-provided passport. The agency appears
not to have classified Litvinenko as being at risk, despite numerous
threatening phone calls from Moscow and a firebomb attack on his north
London home in 2004.
MI6’s reaction is unclear. The British government has still refused
to release the relevant files. One can imagine panic and embarrassment.
And the agency shifting into full-blown crisis mode. The transcripts
show that after speaking to DI Hyatt, “Martin” scrambled to Litvinenko’s
hospital bedside. He talked to his poisoned agent, and left around
7.15pm. The police interview then resumes; the final exchanges deal with
earlier threats against Litvinenko from the Kremlin and its emissaries.
The detectives ask if there is anything Litvinenko would like to add: Hoar: Can you think of anybody else who may wish to do this sort of harm to you? Carter:
I have no doubt who wanted it, and I often receive threats from these
people. This was done … I have no doubt whatsoever that this was done by
the Russian Secret Services. Having knowledge of the system I know that
the order about such a killing of a citizen of another country on its
territory, especially if it is something to do with Great Britain, could
have been given by only one person. Hyatt: Would you like to tell us who that person is, sir? Edwin? Carter:
That person is the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.
And if ... you of course know, while he’s still president, you won’t be
able to prosecute him as the main person who gave that order, because
he is the president of a huge country crammed with nuclear, chemical and
bacteriological weapons. But I have no doubt whatsoever that as soon as
the power changes in Russia or when the first officer of Russian
Special Services defects to the west he will say the same. He will say
that I have been poisoned by the Russian Special Services on Putin’s
order.
* * *
Litvinenko’s condition was rapidly deteriorating.
On 20 November, the same day as his last police interview, doctors
moved him to intensive care. There it was easier to monitor him and, if
necessary, to intervene. Litvinenko’s heart rate was becoming abnormal;
his major organs failing.
The medics treating him were in
uncharted territory. Litvinenko’s case was problematic: his symptoms
were not consistent with thallium poisoning. He had severe bone marrow
failure and gut damage, which fitted. But he lacked one key symptom of
thallium poisoning – peripheral neuropathy, pain or numbness in his
fingers and feet. “It was still a bit of a mystery,” one doctor said.
Meanwhile, those close to Litvinenko were reluctantly concluding that he was unlikely to survive.
The
Kremlin would subsequently accuse Litvinenko’s friend Alex Goldfarb,
and Boris Berezovsky of cynically exploiting him, as part of their
long-running public relations campaign against Putin. In fact,
Litvinenko made it abundantly clear – as the Scotland Yard transcripts
show – that he held Putin personally responsible for his poisoning. And
he wanted to send this message to the world.
Litvinenko’s lawyer,
George Menzies, began drafting a statement on his behalf. Menzies later
said that the ideas in it were wholly Litvinenko’s. “I was doing my
best, in personal terms, to represent what I truly believed to be
Sasha’s state of mind and sentiment,” he said. Its themes – Litvinenko’s
pride in being British, his love of his wife, his belief as to the
source of his illness – mirrored what his client thought, Menzies said.
Goldfarb
and Menzies took the draft to the hospital. They showed it to Marina.
Her reaction was negative. She believed her husband would pull through
and that writing a last testament was tantamount to giving up on him.
Pragmatically, they told her: “Better to do it now than later.”
Menzies
consulted with Tim Bell, chairman of the London PR firm Bell Pottinger.
Bell’s company had worked for Berezovsky since 2002, helping the exiled
oligarch through various legal scrapes, and had assisted the
Litvinenkos as well. Bell said he thought the text was too gloomy and
read like a “deathbed statement.” “I didn’t think it was the right thing
to do because I still hoped and believed Sasha would live,” Bell said.
Goldfarb
read out the A4 sheet to Litvinenko in intensive care, translating it
from English to Russian. At one point Goldfarb made a movement with his
arms, mimicking the flight of an angel flapping its wings. Litvinenko
endorsed the statement in its entirety, confirming: “This is exactly
what I want to say.” Litvinenko then signed and dated it – 21 November
2006, his signature trailing off into a black swirl.
The statement
accused Litvinenko’s one-time FSB boss of murder, and ended: “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.”
TV cameras and media had gathered outside the hospital’s main gate, waiting for news.
Sixteen
floors above them, Litvinenko asked Goldfarb if he was a big story. He
was – but not much was known about Litvinenko, other than that he was a
prominent critic of Putin’s, and desperately ill. Goldfarb said: “Sasha,
if you really want the message to be seriously put across, we need a
photo.” Marina was against the idea, and saw it as an invasion of
privacy. But Litvinenko agreed, and said: “Yes, if you think it’s
needed, let’s do it.” Goldfarb rang Bell Pottinger and spoke to
Jennifer Morgan, Bell’s liaison. Morgan in turn called a photographer
she knew, Natasja Weitsz. Weitsz arrived at the hospital and was
escorted upstairs past a police guard. She was with Litvinenko for mere
minutes. He pushed his green hospital gown to one side so as to reveal
the electro-cardiagram sensors attached to his heart. Weitsz shot a
couple of frames of Litvinenko: bald, gaunt and defiant, staring with
cornflower-blue eyes directly at the camera lens.
The image was cropped
around its haunting subject. It went round the world.
Marina Litvinenko in 2012. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
By the next day, Wednesday 22 November, doctors treating Litvinenko
had scrapped their diagnosis. Their notes read: “We DO NOT feel this
gentleman has or had inorganic At midday, a top-level meeting was
convened at the Met’s counter-terrorism command. It involved SO15
detectives,ledby
Det Supt Timmons, medical staff, a scientist from the UK’s atomic
weapons establishment, the forensic science service and Dr Nick Gent
from Porton Down, the UK’s military science facility. The latest urine
test had revealed the presence of a new radioactive isotope –
polonium-210. But this was marked down as an anomaly, caused by the
plastic container used to carry the sample.thallium poisoning.”
According to Timmons, the specialists discussed five theories that
might explain Litvinenko’s baffling poisoning. Most were esoteric. The
experts decided to investigate further and to send a litre of urine to
Aldermaston.
Back in the intensive care ward, Litvinenko was
drifting in and out of consciousness. The Russian-German film-maker
Andrei Nekrasov visited him. Nekrasov had previously conducted several
interviews with Litvinenko; he shot the video on condition that it would
be released only with Marina’s approval. Litvinenko lies on his bed, a
vanquished soul, around whom the world is darkening. A drip is attached
to his nose; his cheeks are hollow; his eyes are open – just. There is
pale afternoon light.
“He was conscious, but was very, very weak,”
Marina said. “I spent almost all day sitting close to him, [to] make
him just be calm and more relaxed.” At 8pm Marina got up to leave, and
told her husband: “Sasha, unfortunately I have to go.”
She said:
“He smiled so sadly, and I started to feel I’m guilty because I’m
leaving him, and I just said: ‘Don’t worry, tomorrow morning I will come
and everything will be fine.’”
Litvinenko whispered back to her: “I love you so much.”
At
midnight the hospital called to say that Litvinenko had gone into
cardiac arrest, not once but twice. The medics managed to resuscitate
him. Marina returned to University College Hospital, getting a lift with
Zakayev, and found her husband unconscious and on a life-support
machine. She spent the following day, 23 November, at his side;
Litvinenko was in an induced coma. That evening she went back to Muswell
Hill. An hour after arriving home the phone rang. It was the hospital
telling her urgently to return.
Litvinenko suffered a third
cardiac arrest at 8.51pm. The consultant on duty, Dr James Down, tried
to revive him but at 9.21pm pronounced him dead. When Marina and Anatoly
arrived at the hospital they were taken not to the ward but to a side
room. Ten or 15 minutes later, the doctor told them that Litvinenko had
died. He added: “Would you like to see Sasha?” to which Marina replied:
“Of course.”
For the first time in several days, Marina was
allowed to touch and kiss her husband; Anatoly ran from the room after
half a minute.
Six hours before Litvinenko’s death, at about 3pm,
Timmons received a phone call from the atomic weapons establishment. It
had the results from the latest tests. They confirmed that Litvinenko
was “terribly contaminated”, as Timmons put it, with radioactive
polonium. •A Very Expensive Poison by Luke Harding will be published in March by Guardian Faber (£12.99). To order a copy for £7.99, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Luke Harding will be in conversation with Marina Litvinenko
at a Guardian Live event on Thursday 17 March. Tickets £10. His
previous non-fiction books include Mafia State and The Snowden Files.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/19/alexander-litvinenko-the-man-who-solved-his-own-murder#img-4 ORIGINAL
When it comes to sex trafficking, there is a lot of tension among abolitionists over the topic of prostitution.On the extreme ends, some see all prostitution as a form of trafficking while others make a clear distinction between a person who is a prostitute and someone who is a victim of trafficking.There is, of course, a lot of grey area in between.I bring this up though because today I'm feeling a little frustrated with people who make statements such as, "Prostitution is the oldest profession" or "It's been around for centuries,"- as if that somehow proves a point or justifies anything in the prostitution vs. trafficking debate (or, the more common debate over whether prostitution should be legalized).I hate it when people point this out - as if it somehow legitimates anything.Just because something has been around for a long time, doesn't mean it's a good thing.
It's hard to say that women 2000+ years ago chose prostitution of their own free will - more likely, they chose it because it was the only option. It was certainly not some grand statement of female empowerment - rather it was a reaction to the social restrictions placed on women at the time. (Now, some might point to various societies where sex was not as taboo or wrapped up in morality as we see it today, and to them I say that we are talking about commercial transactions for sex - and that if someone can point out a society where prostitution was just as valid a decision as any other business endeavor, and garnered just as much respect and inclusion in society without any opportunity costs (such as marriage) that other business endeavors did not have - I'm willing to listen). ANYWAY - fast forward 2000 years and I wonder how much of this has changed - how much of the decision to become a sex worker today is an enthusiastic embracement of one's own sexuality and the desire to express it in a particular manner, and how much of the decisions is a product of circumstances.
In the present day tension, the idea that someone might choose or even be forced to become a sex worker because of certain circumstances is often overlooked. Now, it is true that, at least from a federal law perspective there has to be some sort of force, fraud, or coercion involved for a commercial transaction involving sex to be considered trafficking. What isn't so clear is what those three words mean. For many, there seems to be this idea that they refer to actions of violence - the woman was chained to the bed, or a gun was held to her head, or she was beaten until she finally submitted. Others consider a definition that afford a little more breadth, so that things like deliberate/blatant psychological coercion or manipulation will qualify as trafficking. Absent some egregious factor such as specific and/or severe physical, sexual, or psychological abuse (from a pimp or from her past) though, many people assume that a woman who is a sex worker is doing it of her own volition - she wants to be there, it was her choice, etc. I think though, that other circumstances play an important role in the idea of consent and that there is room in the idea of force, fraud, or coercion for a different interpretation of consent - one that considers background circumstances that may 'force' a woman into prostitution.
Consent in my mind means active and enthusiastic yes. This can include a woman who chooses, of her own accord, to engage in sexual acts for money. I do not deny that some women will and do choose, of their own volition, without any sort of past hardship or lack of opportunity, to become a sex worker - BUT I think the number of women who fit into this category is very, very small. I think that a large number of women who become sex workers are pushed to that decision by other factors in their life, and when you start adding those factors in, the line between consent and force, fraud, or coercion becomes blurry. What about the woman who did not have the opportunity for an education that would provide her with job skills? What about the woman who has kids to take care of but can't find a job that pays enough? What about the woman who grew up in foster care, or in a family environment surrounded by drug abuse, or the one who is just down on her luck? Are these women victims of trafficking, or are they consenting sex workers?
I am not in any way making a moral judgment here. For your purposes and mine, I have no opinion on the morality of sex workers. What I am trying to do is reframe the debate so people stop seeing it as a black and white, good vs bad issue. I'm asking people to look a little deeper, beyond the question of whether a woman should be allowed to choose to sell her body, beyond the question of whether the government has any right to outlaw a person's rights over their own body, and look beyond the apparent consenting adult ethos. Ask yourself what consent really means, and again, are these women victims of trafficking, or are they consenting sex workers? My answer? I don't know. Maybe this type of circumstance-created sex work doesn't rise to the level of trafficking, but at the same time I hardly think you can view it as enthusiastic consent. I tend to think that many women who are sex workers would not be in that profession if they were given the opportunity for something else (and the idea of a different set of opportunities can go the whole way back to childhood). I also tend to think that the image we see of sex workers - on TV, on news shows that discuss the topic, etc - is a much more glamorous version of what most sex workers experience. I get a sense that the women who go on to news programs to advocate for sex workers (sometimes actual workers, sometimes not) are the exceptions to the rule - maybe even the ones that did have the opportunities others miss. (NB: that was a huge blanket statement there. Please excuse for the sake of the argument).
Now, for a full disclosure that hopefully won't distract from my above point - I don't know what I think about prostitution being legalized either. Some days I favor the idea of legalizing it - because a woman should be able to decide what she does with her body, and even if the only reason she is involved is due to circumstances that forced her there (money issues for example), far be it from me to limit the ways she has to escape those circumstances, or force her into a worse situation because that avenue of income is unavailable. Now, on those days I still favor prosecuting those who create the demand for such services to the maximum possible under the law. I have no time for people who pay for sex - I think it is wrong and pathetic and there is no way you will ever convince me that the payor is not exploiting the payee, even if the payee is a consenting adult. This is one of the few things I will express a judgment on with no reservations or qualifications whatsoever (although the law student in me still feels the need to reserve the right to change that statement, should anyone make a valid argument that convinces me I am wrong). For more on the idea of legalizing prostitution but outlawing the demand side, see Jennifer's post!
Oh - and also - take a moment to think about the phrase, "Prostitution is the oldest profession in history" before you use it to justify present day prostitution. Whether you are for or against the legalization, basing your argument on the reality of a few thousand years ago is just silly. SOURCE
The recent happenings in Castelvolturno (massacre of 7 Africans) by people suspected to be members of the CAMORRA (the Naples mafia) has seen fingersbeing pointed to the CASALESSI family. In this havoc there are many things that people in the Nigerian community in Italy may beworryingabout.
The first report that hit the press was of the killing of 6 Nigerians bythe mafia because of non payment of drug royalties. The killings had every indication that would make anyone point to an organized group like the Camorra; hundreds of bullets form automatic Kalashnikovs by 6 peopleon 'fake' police jackets and cars……….
Later in the day the news came out clearer and the identities of those killed were known; 4 Ghanaians, a Togolese, and a Liberian. There was no Nigerian involved. The poor Africans were all working in their textile and tailoring shop where they sew and mend cloths for Italians and foreigners.
The story changed and some press reports had it that since they were non Nigerians it would have been a mistake by the commando that carried out the operation, insinuating that the Napoli mafia (Camorra) was really annoyed with the Nigerian mafia which has an alliance with them but in the recent past started to disobey and have their own (Nigerian) bosses thereby stopping to pay royalties from drug proceeds. It was also reported that the Nigeriangroupthat hadsignedpacts of alliance many yearsagowith themain mafiafor the indirectcontrol of drugs, prostitution, illegal labor, illegal immigration etc weregathering too much powers ;therefore should be thought a lesson or re-dimensioned.http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2008/settembre/19/Camorra_strage_extracomunitari_co_8_080919002.shtml
The police still insist that those killed were involved in drug movement in the area (they are Africans after all) notwithstanding that no drug was found in their workshop or in their residences.
The Nigerian mafia had theirfirst clash with the Italian mafia 22 yearsago (1986) when 6 Nigerians were 'kneecapped' . There was apparent peace and cooperation with the two mafias until the night between 23rd and 24thApril 1990 when the camorra organized a commando that hit a group of their Nigerian allies in bar Centro di Pescopagano- leaving two deed and many who were not evenconnected with drugswounded.In the month of January this yare 3 persons were charged with the death of those Nigerians.
These are just little bits of the 'Black mafia' which has in the past17 yearsgained a lot of powers and is peculiar for the its tribal based set-upand thesort ofimpunityit hasamongst otherorganizedcriminal groups.
According to the report it is hard to believe that among the numerous drug pushers none of the Nigerians has ever collaborated with the justice to reveal what happens within the group and they have continued to propel their activities from Italy to allover Europegrowing from the sells ofheroine tothe control and wholesale of the cocaine and the control of prostitution.
Therecycling of the black mafia money is throughmoney transfer and other complicated connections that aredifficultfor the Italian central bank or the European Central Bank (ECB) to discover and dismantle. The report claims that the Nigerian Mafiain thisformhasshownagreat competitivenessthat makes it the 5th Mafiain Italy.
Some question I would ask members of the community who read all the press reports , analysis and tv reports on Nigeria and her nationals in Italy:
·Are we all prostitutes, mafians, and drug pushers?
·What is the population of Nigerians in Italy and what is the percentage involved in these vices?
·Who speaks or will speak for the community and defendher and the Nation for all the exaggerations and accusations that has been going on these days in the press?
·what is our mission (embassy) doing to see that the numerous Nigerians that are residentin Italy andare highly law abiding do not faceunnecessary harassments andmolestsfrom Italians and the serotypes of the Italianlaw enforcement agencies? many African ambassadorswent or sent their representatives to Castel Volturno some days ago; did anyonefrom the Nigerian mission travel to that area toascertain the security of law Abiding Nigerians living in that region?
There are more questions to be asked and to be answered on this issue Do you have any?
Il massaggio Shiatsu che si effettua tramite la pressione delle dita, dei palmi delle mani e dei piedi e dei gomiti su tutto il corpo, agisce sui punti energetici considerati dall'agopuntura. Stimola la circolazione sanguigna ed il flusso linfatico, agisce sul sistema nervoso allentando la tensione muscolare più profonda, rimuove le tossine dei tessuti, risveglia il sistema ormonale e sollecita la capacità di autoguarigione del corpo.
![PEOPLE [Obama]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNzwHiLRtDuKiaZMLxyWzJWeGWRuzHPH7agS6pE5XKqaJ07OOnUnPBHmYMO9LuAD755pVZf9CVdmMZe3C86-LSMctDE0ou-zp-IE5EL-0CZ8iHYPlVqar_DWhyphenhyphenyBNzGnpFoHfC1cPRnRo/s228/temp_flashheader.jpg){kind=small}
