Obstructions of Justice

On the day that the British government refuses a request by Coroner Sir Robert Owen to hold a public inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, Edward Snowden announces his intention to seek political asylum in Russia.

Marina Litvinenko: Cameron struck deal with Putin

In the Guardian, Luke Harding discusses Marina Litvinenko's reaction to David Cameron's decision to meet Vladimir Putin in Downing Street on Sunday, in the run-up to next week's G8 summit. She says it is morally wrong to "appease dictators":

Marina Litvinenko said she was convinced London and Moscow had struck a pragmatic understanding to bury the Litvinenko affair. She said: "How can you have serious talks about security in Syria with a person who doesn't want you to provide justice following a polonium terror attack in central London? It was obviously Mr Putin himself who protected Lugovoi from extradition. I believe it is Putin who also decided that Lugovoi should become a Russian MP."

From Harding's report it also emerges that the North Caucasus human rights lawyer Olga Chelysheva has been denied entry to the U.K.

Litvinenko: Coroner's Request for a Public Inquiry

Press release: 

Coroner's Inquest into the death of Alexander Litvinenko

5 June 2013

CORONER'S REQUEST FOR A PUBLIC INQUIRY

Her Majesty's Assistant Deputy Coroner for Inner North London, Sir Robert Owen, has written to the Secretary of State for Justice, the Right Honourable Christopher Grayling MP, requesting that a decision be made to order a Public Inquiry under section 1 (1) of the Inquiries Act 2005 to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr Litvinenko.

The letter follows on from Sir Robert's Public Interest Immunity (PII) ruling of 17 May 2013 in which he sought submissions from the Interested Persons relating to the setting up of a Public Inquiry. The Coroner received submissions which have been posted on the Inquest's website. [http://www.litvinenkoinquest.org/ ]

The next hearing will be held as planned on Tuesday 11 June when Sir Robert currently intends to hear three applications for anonymity.

Chronology

• 7 February 2013 – The Public Interest Immunity (PII) application was made to the Coroner by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

• 26 February 2013 – an inter partes public hearing which took argument from Interested Persons and from the press.

• 27 February 2013 – the Coroner's Oral Ruling.

• 17 May – The Coroner releases his final Open Ruling. Parties have been given 14 days to challenge the ruling.

• 4 June – The Coroner writes to the Secretary of State for Justice requesting the setting up of a Public Inquiry.
ENDS

For further information journalists should contact the Inquest's communications manager, Mike Wicksteed.
Email: pressoffice@...
Website: http://litvinenkoinquest.org
Tel: 07557-491634.

Links

Luke Harding, on the collapse of the Litvinenko inquest (The Interpreter)

Masha Gessen, on why she is leaving Russia (The Lumière Reader)

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, on late capitalism, in correspondence with Slavoj Žižek  (The New Times - Russian)

Dexter Filkins, on the internal White House debate over Syria (The New Yorker)

David Satter, on what the Russians really knew about the Tsarnaev brothers (National Review Online)

The "Black Widow" stories

As Norbert Strade has pointed out, the March 29 bomb attacks on the Moscow subway, and their aftermath, have many features in common with the bomb blasts that were frequent in Russia during the mid-2000s:

- The 2003 attack on a rock concert on the Tushino airfield. Bombs exploded in two waste baskets, according to witnesses. The Russian authorities blamed female suicide bombers and "found" their passports.

- Also 2003, a car was blown up next to the "National Hotel" (a well-known mafia joint). After a while, the story was spun into a "female suicide bomber" case, and again, they "found" a passport.

- In 2004, two bomb explosions in the Moscow metro. It took the authorities several days to make up a story about a Caucasian suicide bomber in the first case, while the witness accounts went in many different directions and the established facts pointed at a criminal connection . In the second attack, they again "found" the remains and the passport of a female suicide bomber.

Btw., passports have a remarkable ability to survive terrorist bomb explosions.

- Also in 2004, the bomb explosions in two airplanes in connection with the Beslan hostage taking (claimed by Shamil Basayev) were highly suspect. In spite of the fact that their own investigation had stated that the airplanes were blown up by bombs placed in the baggage compartment, the Russian authorities continued their "black widow" stories. And they had to tweak their version several times, until it had become completely comical (two "black widows" - apparently dressed up to the act - had bribed their way into both planes and then simultaneously,in mid-air, blown up the bombs in the baggage with remote controls - what gives...).

Not to forget, while there is a serious lack of hard evidence linking North Caucasian suicide bombers to the mentioned attacks, one shouldn't forget how FSB officers were caught red-handed trying to blow up an apartment building in 1999.  

To this it might be added that at least one of the apparent motives for the murder of the ex-KGB and ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was his account of the last-mentioned incident from an insider's point of view.

It seems that in Russia's war on terror little has altered in the space of 10 years. Even the rhetoric is unchanged. Today, Vladimir Putin said: "We know that in this case they are hiding on the bottom, but it is now a a matter of honour for our law enforcement officers to winkle them out from the bottom of the sewer into the light of day" (quoted from ITAR-TASS).  Putin first used the "sewer" imagery in relation to Chechen terrorists back in 2000 (which was also the year of the first suicide bombing in Russia), but has not re-used it until now. 

From an interview - 3

Mikhail Sokolov: So is Russia continuing to travel along the path laid out by Putin – anti-Westernism, “soft” dictatorship, and so on, or not?

Yuri Felshtinsky: You know, I can’t really call what’s happening in Russia today anti-Westernism, or even soft dictatorship. The people in the government are mostly those who worked for the KGB all their lives, or sometimes for other law enforcement agencies. In addition to the fact that all these people were born and lived in the Soviet era and were trained in the Soviet system, these people have passed through the school of the law enforcement agencies.

I don’t mean to offend the former or current leaders of the KGB, but you and I both know how the selection process for this organization, especially the KGB, worked. In other words, let’s put it this way: there are no good people there. I can’t emphasize this enough. A good person did not go to work for the KGB. I know it from Sasha Litvinenko. I always said to Sasha Litvinenko: "Sasha, you know, there are two people in your organization. One needs to be rewarded, and the other needs to be punished.” He would say: "Who are they?" "The person who should be rewarded is whoever chose you to work in the FSB and the KGB. Because it’s incredible, I mean, you’re a typical KGB officer. And the person who ought to be punished is whoever let slip the moment when you decided to defect from the KGB, because it’s extremely dangerous for the KGB to have you as an enemy." And as an enemy of the FSB Litvinenko was indeed very dangerous, and so they killed him. They couldn’t find any other way of fighting him, they had to kill him.

To return to our topic: a good person did not go to work for the KGB, so by definition absolutely all the people who served in the KGB were bad people. That may be a naive thing to say.

Mikhail Sokolov: Not very scientific.

Yuri Felshtinsky: No, but it’s true. In everyday terms, you and I and all of us know that all those people are bad people. So what can one expect of the political system of our country, whether present or future, when it’s overwhelmingly led by these same bad people? Of course, nothing good can be expected of it. The fact that from time to time we encounter some anti-Western statements, for example, or some minor wars such as the one in Georgia –it's all the result of the fact that these people run Russia today. They can’t act any differently, it’s just the way they’re made.

http://felshtinsky.livejournal.com/4745.html

Russia still refuses to extradite Lugovoi

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/02/miliband-russia-visit-litvinenko

Two interviews

Fedotov and McFaul.

Looking through GQ

Commenting on the recent GQ controversy, and the question of "Radio Liberty's failure for a number of days to post on its Russian-language website any in-depth reports about the banning in Russia of Scott Anderson's "GQ" magazine article, which was highly critical of Mr. Putin and accused the FSB of instigating terrorist attacks to help his rise to power", ex-VOA reporter and executive Ted Lepien writes that

Thirty-one years ago this week, on 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré journalist who wrote for Radio Free Europe, BBC and Deutsche Welle, was assaulted in broad daylight on London’s Waterloo Bridge. Markov's murder happened during the Cold War, but in more recent years the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and of numerous other journalists in Russia, as well as the assassination in London of former KGB and FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who became a vocal critic of Mr. Putin, have brought into focus the question of how safe it is in the post-Cold War world to criticize Russian leaders, especially for journalists living in Russia, but also for anybody living in the West who has ties to Russia.

Hat tip: Mari-Ann Kelam

Polonium trail

Alex Goldfarb, quoted in the Times:

“These two people [Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun] are playing games because they know that their bluff will not be called. They want to create a positive PR effect and make it appear as if they are ready to cooperate with the investigation.”

The yacht case - 5

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23579423-details/Veteran+KGB+spy+revealed+as+Deripaska%27s+right-hand+man/article.do

Finnish Islamists back Russia

The possibility that Islamist movements in Europe and probably also further afield to some extent work in harmony with the Putin/Medvdev schemes in the field of military and foreign policy is evidenced by an interesting statement by the Finnish Islamic Party (Suomenislamilainenpuolue), which aims to represent the interests of Finland's small Muslim minority. The statement condemns the "aggressive acts of the Georgian leadership" and gives the party's full support to Russia. It also makes a savage attack on the president and government of Estonia, and demands that President Saakashvili be put on trial for war crimes. Although Finland's Muslims are mostly Tatars, and have little time for fundamentalist ideology, the document is a curious and revealing indicator of the sort of sources where the Kremlin may really be deriving support in today's world. The fact that the Hamas organization was the first to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia may not be a coincidence.

That some voices in Finland may be helping to foment a movement which they call a "Russian Intifada" among Estonia's Russian-speaking minority is shown by this blog, which is dedicated to the subject.

There has long been a noted connection between the Kremlin and Islamist groupings, and it is no secret that, as Alexander Litvinenko pointed out before he was brutally murdered in London, Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri trained at a Federal Security Service (the former Russian KGB) base in Dagestan in 1998.

A Victim of the State

In the aftermath of the assassination in London of the British citizen Alexander Litvinenko, the claims that the British television presenter Jill Dando was in fact killed by a Serbian hitman begin to make more sense - particularly in view of yesterday's acquittal of Barry George, and the upcoming war crimes trial of Radovan Karadzic at the Hague. In 2001 the Independent newspaper published an article about the Serbian connection to the case. Excerpt:

Michael Mansfield, QC, who is defending the man accused of her murder, Barry George, told the Old Bailey that there was evidence to suggest that Miss Dando, who was shot dead on the doorstep of her home in south-west London on 26 April 1999, had been a victim of state terrorism. He argued that Ms Dando may have become a target after she presented a television appeal for aid for Kosovan refugees and then days later Nato fired a cruise missile at a television station owned by a relative of Slobodan Milosevic, killing 17 people. Mr Mansfield read out an intelligence report received at the National Criminal Intelligence Service and passed to officers investigating Ms Dando's shooting.

It stated: "Jill Dando was the subject of an execution by a Yugoslavian hitman. Intelligence sources suggest that as a result of the bombing of a TV station run by the daughters of Milosevic, a contract was put out on the head of the BBC, John Birt.

"As a result of him receiving threatening letters his security was stepped up - after this the target was changed to Jill Dando."

UK denounces Russia spy charge

Via CNN:

"It's wholly unacceptable to make such allegations against any named individuals and by definition we are not going to comment on the truth of them," said a UK Foreign Office spokeswoman, who declined to be named.

The spokeswoman declined to discuss the matter further but confirmed that [Christopher] Bowers heads UKTI, which works with British companies overseas and encourages international investment in Britain.

MI5: Litvinenko murder had backing of Russian state

The BBC reports that a senior Whitehall source has told the BBC Newsnight programme that the murder of Alexander Litvinenko by radioactive poisoning in London was carried out with the backing of the Russian state.

The Threat to the U.K. - 2

More from the Telegraph, quoting a source in MI5:

"MI5's resources have been stretched to the limit for the past few years. There have been times when there was nothing left in the locker, when all of our assets were being used on one operation.

"At the same time, we have to contend with the very real threat being posed by the Russians. Russia is a country which is under suspicion of committing murder on British streets and it must be assumed that having done it once they will do it again."

The source said MI5 was so stretched that some recent counter-terrorist operations against Muslim extremists had used up its entire surveillance resources, meaning other areas of security and intelligence work had inevitably suffered.

The Litivinenko Annexe

Ian Traynor, writing in the Guardian about the EU's new strategic partnership project:

Under what a European diplomat described as "the Litvinenko annexe", Moscow would come under pressure to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the Russian MP and main suspect in the London murder by radiation poisoning.

Missing the Point

Two-thirds of the way through an assessment of the U.S. missile defence shield as "Russia's Red Herring" in negotiations with a Washington administration that is sometimes seen as slow to put two and two together where foreign policy issues - particularly Russia-related ones - are concerned, Robert Amsterdam writes:

Washington's failure to respond positively to Putin's unprecedented security cooperation following 9/11 will go down as the greatest wasted opportunity in recent history.

One wonders whether Washington - or indeed any other Western government professing to uphold the values of democracy and human rights - could have responded positively to "security" initiatives by a regime that engendered the documented massacres committed by its armed forces in Chechnya and the North Caucasus, and - it now seems probable - the 1999 apartment bombings in Russia which killed several hundred innocent civilians and served as a pretext for the opening of the second Russian military campaign in Chechnya.

True Colours

By its recent actions in harassing, threatening and intimidating British Council staff in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, the Russian government has shown its true colours. This is not a government for which the ideals of friendship and cultural co-operation between nations have much or any resonance at all - rather, it is a narrow-minded, vengeful and politically-motivated clique, intent upon cynical troublemaking and the stoking of international tensions.

BBC correspondent Paul Reynolds has drawn attention to the link between the present crisis and the legal ramifications surrounding the actions of the Russian nationalist Andrei Lugovoi, who is suspected of involvement in the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London in the autumn of 2006. Again, the Putin government's support and protection of Lugovoi points to its true nature, and should leave no one in any doubt as to what its inclinations are.

An interesting feature of the present crisis, which was obviously prepared in advance by the Russian authorities, is the flooding of British media comments boards (the Mail and Telegraph are the two leading examples at present) with anti-UK and pro-Putin messages posted by Russians posing under English-sounding names.

British Council Fights Back - V

Via BBC:

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has warned Russia that "intimidation" of British Council officials is "completely unacceptable".

The council is "deeply concerned" about its staff's safety after its employees were interviewed by security services and a director was detained by police.

Mr Miliband said the Russian ambassador in London would meet the head of the diplomatic service over the issue.

"Any intimidation or questioning of officials is completely unacceptable."