Flying the Radioactive Skies
// 60,000 may have been poisoned along with Litvinenko
An autopsy will be conducted today at the London Royal Hospital on political emigrant Alexander Litvinenko, who died last week of poisoning with radioactive Polonium-210. Genuine panic has engulfed London. The police are saying that 60,000 people who flew British Airway this month may have been exposed to radiation. It is assumed that radiation was left on those aircraft by three Russian citizens who met with Litvinenko on November 1, the day he was poisoned.
Nearly 2500 people have called the hotline set up by British Airlines. Weak traces of radioactivity have been found on two of its planes, and a third Boeing 767 that is now located at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow is awaiting examination by specialists. If passengers on any of those three planes were afflicted with nausea, vomiting or headache that did not pass within 24 hours of their flight, the hotline operators are recommending that they called the National Health Service. “We are contacting everyone who flew on those flights ourselves. But if you feel some unexplainable distress, contact your healthcare giver,” one operator told Kommersant.
Police turned their attention to the planes on which Russian businessmen Andrey Lugovoi, Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, who met with Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel on November 1, arrived in and departed from London. Lugovoi, who is now undergoing medical examination in a Moscow hospital along with is family, told Kommersant that he arrived in London on October 31. Kovtun arrived from Germany the next day. Sokolenko was already in London. All three of them are graduates of the same military academy, worked in state security agencies and became bodyguards. Lugovoi was former Russian prime minister Egor Gaidar's bodyguard. Now he is engaged in business.
All three of them, Lugovoi said, came to London with their families and met to attend a soccer game on November 1. At about 4:00 in the afternoon, before the game, they met with Litvinenko in the lobby of the hotel. Litvinenko came to the hotel to make arrangements with Lugovoi and Kovtun for a meeting with British businessmen the next day, Lugovoi said. Lugovoi said the meeting lasted about 20 minutes.
Lugovoi and friends had drinks in anticipation of the game and invited Litvinenko to join them, but he declined. Litvinenko did not eat anything either. Lugovoi's eight-year-old son came into the bar as the meeting was drawing to a close, and Lugovoi introduced him to Litvinenko.
Lugovoi recounted those details to make it clear that he and his friends were not involved in the poisoning of Litvinenko, if only because the circumstances did not allow them an opportunity.
“To be seriously poisoned by Polonium-210, a person must ingest a large enough dose in food or drink, inhale it or rub it into his skin,” explained Oleg Polskikh, deputy director of the Radon research center for the detoxification of radioactive waste. “If that product is simply located near a person, it is harmless.”
Lugovoi claimed that Litvinenko called him on the evening of November 1 to say that he would be unable to meet the next day because he felt unwell. He called again on November 2 and said that he would probably only recover “toward December.” Lugovoi did not know where the traces of radioactivity on the airplanes came from.
Igor Kornkov, a division head at Radon, told Kommersant that only people who had direct contact with Polonium or were exposed to it could leave radioactive traces in the airplanes. “A person with Polonium in his body could leave traces of the isotope through his bioeffluents,” he said. If a person works directly with Polonium, particles of the isotope on his clothing and hands may, for example, be left on seats and armrests. In any case, Radon employees say, the dose would be miniscule and not a threat to other passengers, no more than a person might receive from passing 10,000-12,000 meters over a source of natural radiation.
British Home Secretary John Reid gave his second report to the House of Commons on the preliminary results of the investigation of Litvinenko's death. Reid reported that 24 buildings had been checked for radioactivity, and traces of radioactivity were found in 12 of them, which could have been left by Litvinenko or persons coming into contact with him. Furthermore, 60,000 people flew in the “exposed” airplanes. Police have a list of those people and will contact them, “if circumstances require it.”
MPs had several questions for Reid after his report. Mark Field, MP from London and Westminster, asked what the basis was for former FSB officer Litvinenko's political asylum in Great Britain. “Doesn't it seem to you that the time has come to think seriously about whether people who come to our country and continue to agitate against other countries should be allowed to stay?” he asked. Reid replied negatively. Another MP added that dissidents come to Britain because it offers reliable refuge. “But if they are going to kill them in front of the eyes of the whole nation, we will no longer be a reliable refuge,” he said. MP Mark Pritchard suggested that the status of immigrants who “pose a threat to the national security of Britain with their activities” should be reconsidered. He was not supported by his colleagues, however.
Sergey Chabanenko, Alvina Kharchenko, London
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 01, 2006
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