Dec 10 2006

Trail Shows Kovtun Was Contaminated, Smuggler

Major Update: Well, one prediction of mine has been proven wrong. It seems Kovtun flew from Moscow to Hamburg first, and then onto London. One has to wonder why he would do this round-about route to get to London. Did he need to pick something up in Hamburg was he trying to provide an indepedent route for the material he was carrying?

Major Update: Some Polonium 210 must have come in from Germany with Kovtun since it is now pretty clear his trail begins prior to his trip to London:

German authorities said Sunday they have found traces of the rare radioactive substance polonium-210 at an apartment visited by a contact of poisoned ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko before they met in London.

Prosecutors said they were investigating Dmitry Kovtun on initial suspicion of improper handling of radioactive material, but said any connection with Litvinenko’s death was for British police to clarify.

Investigators said the Russian businessman visited his ex-wife’s Hamburg apartment the night before heading to London, where he met Litvinenko on November 1 — the day the former spy is believed to have fallen ill.

Litvinenko was killed by polonium-210. Gerald Kirchner of the German Federal Radiation Protection agency said at a news conference that tests on traces of radiation at the apartment “clearly show that it is polonium-210.”

Kovtun arrived in Hamburg from Moscow on October 28 on an Aeroflot flight, officials said.

This is some big news because the material is not coming in from Russia as suspected. As I noted below, there is a history of smuggling nuclear material out of Russia and Europe to the ME from Germany in the 1990’s (I will get a link here soon). So it would make sense this same network could reverse the flow now. And Oct 28th was not Kovtun’s first trip to London. He was with Lugovoi and Litvinenko on Oct 16th, which is associated with another hotel contamination in Knightsbridge.

Radiation was found on a couch where Kovtun is believed to have slept in his ex-wife’s apartment, on a document he brought to Hamburg immigration authorities and in the passenger seat of the BMW car that picked him up from Hamburg airport, police said.

This last item is also important. It seems Kovtun had simply stayed over between flights from someplace else on his way to London (thus the car contamination). And it seems the German police are being much more realistic in their reporting of events:

Prosecutor Martin Koehnke said Kovtun was not initially treated as a suspect because of the possibility that the polonium was inside his body.

Subsequently, Koehnke said, an investigation against him on suspicion of improper handling of radioactive material was begun “because at least at the moment, at this stage of the investigation, we have sufficient initial cause to believe that he brought the polonium traces to Hamburg outside his body, or that these traces are the result of contact with polonium 210.”

This confirms something else I have assumed – authorities can distinguish one form of contamination from the other. Therefore there is no doubt when something is being contaminated from a human vector (infected person) verses material itself being transported by someone (knowingly or unknowingly).

Addendum: OK, switched computers, had a crash and now recovering my research links. I am not going to try and synopsise these, instead I leave it for the readers to ingest. But these links give a picture of the nuclear smuggling history and paths.

First is this report on nuclear smuggling between 1995-2000 which speculates on the reasons for an apparent lull in activity during this period. Take special note on the Iridium smuggling into the UK that took place. And there was a case when material was smuggled from Russia into Germany which caused a big stir.

Second is this chronology of nuclear smuggling cases from 1993-1995. The third item of interest is this report on nuclear smuggling involving Turkey, which seems to be a gateway between Europe and the Middle East. The next link focuses in on a 2004 investigation in Switzerland regarding alleged nuclear smuggling activities. Next is this recent report regarding these same smuggling activities in Switzerland and how they relate to AQ Kahn’s nuclear black market activities which were linked to nuclear programs in Iran and Lybia. Next is a recent news report that one Boris Berezovsky is now under investigation in Switzerland for many laundering. Let me save here and see if I need to add some more links tying all this to Germany. But you will see Germany mentioned in many of these reports as one path of the smuggling paths used in the 1990s. The same time Kovtun moved to Germany to start his business. OK, one more on smuggling in general.

More: Here is a link between a German and AQ Kahn’s network, and here is a report from 1994 showing how Germany was the frontline for nuclear smuggling at that time. OK, that should establish the fact there is a case to be made this was a smuggling effort and a natural path was through existing resources and players. I would not be surprised to learn Kovtun had returned from some country near the mid-east on his way to London.

Even More: Link between Switzerland, Germany and AQ Kahn network. Details starting coming out at the trial as well.

– end update

Details released by German authorities indicate Kovtun was trailing Polonium-210.

Hamburg- German prosecutors have opened an inquiry against Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun for spreading radioactive polonium as he travelled through the city of Hamburg on October 30-31, senior prosecutor Martin Koehnke said Sunday. At a news conference in Hamburg, Koehnke said Kovtun was not yet being accused of the murder the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London three weeks later.

The suspicion of spreading a dangerous substance in Hamburg came after polonium-210 was found on a couch where Kovtun slept, on the passenger seat of a car in which he travelled and on an immigration document he personally signed at a German government office.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency

The question now is how is it he did not get any in his own house. And of course we need to know when this was relative to Litvinenko’s poisoning. I have been researching smuggling paths for nuclear material and it turns out the Germany was in the 1990’s one such regular path out fo Russia. And of course there are paths to the ME as well. I would not be surprised if this Polonium-210 originated in Iran and found its way over old smuggling routes from the 1990’s into Europe. Experience ounts on these things. Kovtun and others could have been asociated with the export of material heading towards Iran and Pakistand and Libya.

113 responses so far

113 Responses to “Trail Shows Kovtun Was Contaminated, Smuggler”

  1. crosspatch says:

    Here is another data point:

    Once it was obvious that he was suffering radiation poison, they would have eventually found out what killed him even if they have been unable to isolate polonium through chemestry. They could use physics. All they would have had to do is watch the decay profile in biological samples taken from his body, they would have learned the half-life of the material and determined that it had to be polonium. It would take longer, but they would be certain to discover polonium was used. This was made certain by the dose Litvinenko got. Whoever poisoned Litvinenko wanted to make sure the world knew it was polonium. They didn’t want just the Russian community to know, they wanted the entire world to know. Either that, or this was a world class accident.

  2. crosspatch says:

    Yes, random contamination would be expected if a particle brushes off here or there. So the article says they have evidence of contamination inconsistant with body fluids and other contamination consistant with body fluids.

    This means he has a healthy dose inside him already before he goes to London, if that is the case.

  3. lostinthedrift says:

    CP, I wonder how the distribution of Po, a salt or the metal, would work if enclosed in a suitcase. Perhaps the person opening the suitcase would get hit by a cloud in their face.

  4. crosspatch says:

    Or have random contamination of their clothing. But in order to get hit in the face with it AND suffer a dose large enough to poison you, it would have to be a very concentrated cloud. Remember the radiation workers in the UK that spilled polonium, put it in a bag, and compressed the bag causing the air inside to be expelled into their face? They didn’t get sick.

    More likely the contaminated suitcase is the cause of random contamination by Lugovoi et al. Depending on which clothes they wore, they trail contamination. They shower and change clothes, then only leave contamination by body fluids.

  5. Barbara says:

    Lizardel

    I read where Kovtun’s ex-wife said he spent the night of Oct 30 on her couch and left the next day for London. That would put him in London on Oct. 31 the same day as Lugovoi.

    If this polonium was in liquid form and the vial holding it broke down then that would account for the spill and in order not to lose any more they quickly put the polonium vial in the teacup while they got another container. It sounds like the polonium came from Iran through Hamburg. It sounds like Kovtun received the polonium on Oct. 30 and left for London the next day with it.

    What has happened to Solenko? I haven’t heard much about him. Is he sick? Was he in on the smuggling? Or was he an innocent bystander? I thought Litvinenko said he insisted he (Litvinenko) have tea. What could that mean?

  6. Lizarde1 says:

    Check out the site meter – there are viewers from China and Korea and one site that continuously reappears in England – it’s interesting

    Barbara there was already po in London Oct. 16 at the Parkes Hotel

  7. crosspatch says:

    “TEHRAN. Iran soon to take “final step” in atomic plan. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday his country would soon take the “final step” in its nuclear programme, Iran’s official news agency reported without saying what that would involve. He did not explain what the “final step” was, but Iran has said it will press ahead with its atomic plans despite UN calls to halt uranium enrichment, which the West believes is part of a plan to build atomic bombs. Tehran says its programme is peaceful. “The Iranian nation is about to take its final step in the nuclear issue,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying, without giving further details. ”

    http://www.lexpress.mu/display_article.php?news_id=76099

  8. crosspatch says:

    That article was from November 16, by the way.

  9. clarice says:

    Barbara.They found traces on Kovtun from Russia TO hamburg. They found trace in places where he was in Hamburg but none on the plane he took to London.
    ******

    I wonder if he and Lugovoy had minor contamination (like the cops and hospital workers) but got it inside them–i.e. thru small cuts–which means their tracks are easier to follow.(In OTW, not becausse they actually handled it, but because for some reason it got inside them.)

  10. crosspatch says:

    Highly likely, Clarice. They were probably handling the material, got some on them, probably some on their hands as well, and somehow transferred it to mouth but it would take terribly contaminated hands to transfer that much into your gut.

    Looks like a pattern on sloppy handling of the material to me. They probably couldn’t smuggle it in its original packaging because it would be obvious what it was so they needed to transfer the contents. You would probably have trouble explaining a vacuum sealed steel can that says “DANGER: POLONIUM” on it to customs.

    If they were smuggling it to jihadis, they wouldn’t care. If they were smuggling to someone who knew what they were doing, the customer might become alarmed at the contamination.

  11. crosspatch says:

    I would also check to see who had been visiting various embassays and counsulates. There is an Iranian counsulate in Hamburg.

  12. lostinthedrift says:

    No doubt the cloud wouldn’t go straight to their faces only. In fact, part of the appeal of that speculation is that it would explain why so many people became contaminated from brief contact with Litvinenko and the others – they were covered in fine Po spray and handed out contaminated bills .

  13. crosspatch says:

    I don’t think that would cause the level of contamination we are seeing, though. I could be wrong. I brought up the Iranian counsulate thing because of something AJ said and this from an article on the web on the subject of nuclear smuggling:

    They described Khan as the head of an operation likely involved in supplying both DPRK and Iran with uranium enrichment technology and hardware in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Libya was also a customer, receiving an array of nuclear-related equipment and know-how that included blueprints of a nuclear bomb handed over to U.S. and British intelligence officials late last month, they said.

    Middlemen responsible for meshing supply and demand were located in European capitals, Asia and the Middle east, they said, typically working with Iranian, Libyan and DPRK’s diplomats stationed abroad.

    These would identify their country’s needs and the intermediaries would then procure the orders, often ordering sensitive parts from manufacturers unaware of the end destination or purpose of what they were selling, they said. Most of those companies, were in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and other West European countries with the technological expertise to make finely machined centrifuge parts and other components.

    http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2004-02/03/content_302529.htm

    That is from 2004.

  14. crosspatch says:

    “The report from a leading EU intelligence service obtained by the Guardian represent, it seems, the pooled knowledge of at least four major EU member-states on how countries such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea orchestrate a vast network of traders, phoney companies, state institutions and diplomatic missions internationally to procure the means to develop chemical, biological, nuclear and conventional weapons.”

    From:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,1677555,00.html

    If Iran has a nuclear program, they might be trying to profit from it. If they refuse to operate legitimately, then they might choose to operate in a more clandestine fashion.

    Or they could simply be providing material to terrorists.

  15. Lizarde1 says:

    too bad Goldfarb doesn’t read the newspapers – they questioned Kovtun for two days last week – all the headlines said Kovtun goes into coma after being questioned LOL
    Alex Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko, accused Russian authorities Sunday of trying to obstruct the British probe by preventing Lugovoi and Kovtun from being questioned.

    “It’s a clumsy effort to cover up the trace, to prevent British investigators from meeting with two key witnesses,” Goldfarb told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from London.

  16. Lizarde1 says:

    Barbara it was the 31st:
    German authorities said Mr Kovtun spent the night at his ex- wife’s flat in the district of Ottensen on 31 October. He flew to London the next day.

  17. Lizarde1 says:

    this is from the INdependent and a view of how desperate they are to keep up the assassin poison story:
    Scotland Yard believe Mr Litvinenko was probably poisoned twice, once at a sushi restaurant in Mayfair, and then at the Millennium Hotel, also in central London, where he had a brief meeting with Mr Kovtun and two of his business partners.

  18. lostinthedrift says:

    That is amazing…hardly the most parsimonious solution to the problem.

    http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2064705.ece

  19. crosspatch says:

    If he was also poisoned at the sushi bar then I would be convinced that Boris did it and Scaramella is in on it.

  20. Lizarde1 says:

    Boris is keeping a very low profile – only Goldfarb is out and about saying stupidities