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Times Online - Fallout spreads from Russian spy death

The Cobra Cabinet emergency committee, which met after the July 7 bombings and the discovery of the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic aircraft this summer, convened after doctors found traces of polonium-210, a highly toxic radioactive substance, in the urine of Alexander Litvinenko, a former spy and critic of the Kremlin.

Good heavens.

If - as Litvinenko himself claimed before his death last night - the Russian state apparatus is shown to have had a hand in the poisoning, Anglo-Russian relations would be thrown into crisis.

The Health Protection Agency, the body charged with protecting the public’s health, described the apparently deliberate poisoning of Litvinenko on November 1 as an “unpredecented event” in the UK but said that the risk of exposure to those who came into contact with him was minimal.

Radiation experts and detectives from Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism branch fanned out across London after the presence of significant alpha radiation was found in Litvinenko’s urine at around 6pm last night, said the chief executive of the HPA, Dr Pat Troop. …

The identity of the poison dramatically catalysed the investigation into Litvinenko’s death. Chemists said that a fatal dose of polonium could only be produced artificially, by a particle accelerator or nuclear reactor.

In other words, folks, it weren’t the raw fish.

“This is not some random killing. This is not a tool chosen by a group of amateurs. These people had some serious resources behind them,” Dr Andrea Sella, a lecturer in chemistry at University College London, told Reuters.

Earlier today, a statement dictated by Litvinenko in his last hours before losing consciousness accused President Vladimir Putin of his murder.

Spooks, poison, and deathbed fingers of accusation raised at world leaders? Man.

Update:

Times Online - Briefing: What is polonium-210?

Discovered in 1898 by Marie Curie, the Polish-French physicist who became the first two time Nobel laureate, it was named after her homeland, Poland. …

When ingested or inhaled, polonium starts attacking organs and can cause irreversible damage to the kidneys, liver and spleen. As was the case with Litvinenko, it would also make its victims hair fall out.

A by-product of uranium, it has the chemical symbol Po and lies in the group below oxygen in the periodic table. Chemically similar to tellurium and bismuth, it has a metallic appearance and dissolves in dilute acids, so could easily have been slipped into Litvnenko’s food or a drink.

Britain’s independent Health Protection Agency said that polonium-210 - the polonium isotope identified in the case - can represent a radiation hazard if it is ingested, through breathing, eating or in a wound. However, it is not a danger so long as it remains outside the body and as such, would have not caused any harm to those using it as a poison.

Well, hey.

Update II (11.25):

The Times - Poisoned spy was the victim of state terror

Cobra, the Cabinet’s emergency security committee, met yesterday after toxicologists confirmed that the 43-year-old former KGB colonel had a large dose of alpha radiation in his body. The committee chaired by John Reid, the Home Secretary, considered the risk to the public after the discovery of radioactive material in a Central London sushi bar and at the Millennium Hotel, near the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, where Mr Litvinenko held meetings on November 1. Radioactive traces were also found at his family home in Muswell Hill, North London.

The quantity of polonium-210 used could only have been obtained from a nuclear instillation, scientific experts said.

Okay so about a year ago British Intelligence was “humiliated” over a rock in a park in Moscow that was a drop point for their spies back when. Big stink was made. Embarrassment abounded, [MI6 looked like idiots, and a minor international incident lasted the week’s news cycle.

But now we’ve got a man, a former spy, with a loquacious father and network of friends, who takes three agonizing and newsworthy weeks to die, with a poison discovered in him and in a few areas of the biggest city in the EU, which turns out to be radioactive and which, just as his dying words are implicating the president of Russia, can only be obtained from a nuclear installation, the sort of nuclear installation a large country like Russia would have, and manages to drag senior government ministers and officials including the Prime Minister into a meeting of Cobra, all of which is washed all over the western world’s press.

Who’s the idiot now?

Update III:

No, wait, now we’ve got a public radiation panic sparked too! Well done, the Russians!

Telegraph - Health tests offered to Litvinenko contacts

Health tests were today offered to people who fear they may have come into contact with the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died after being poisoned with a radioactive substance.