Bismillah, ASA
Likewise when will the man who sleeps in a White House built by Black Slaves, and U.S. legislators who work in a Capitol building built by slaves, bring themselves to make a formal government apology to the world in general and the descendants of those slaves in particular, for their role in slavery? How can they sleep and work without their conscience bothering them daily?
Peace, Curtis Sharif
Houston, Texas
"G.Waleed Kavalec" <kavalec@gmail.com> wrote:
-----
*Why I am saying sorry for London's role in this horror.*
The state failure to issue an apology for a crime as monstrous as the slave
trade diminishes Britain in the eyes of the world.
By Kenneth Robert Livingstone
(Mr. Livingsrone is the Mayor of London)
Wednesday March 21, 2007
Next Sunday marks the bicentenary of the abolition of one of history's
greatest crimes - the transatlantic slave trade. The British government must
formally apologise for it. All attempts to evade this are weasel words.
Delay demeans our country. Recalling the slave trade's dimensions will show
why. Conservative estimates of the numbers transported are 10-15 million;
others range up to 30 million. Deaths started immediately, as many as 5% in
prisons before transportation and more than 10% during the voyage - the
direct murder of some 2 million people.
Conditions imposed on survivors were unimaginable. Virginia made it lawful
"to kill and destroy such negroes" who "absent themselves from ... service".
Branding and rape were commonplace.
A Jamaican planter, Thomas Thistlewood,
in 1756 had a slave "well flogged and pickled, then made Hector shit in his
mouth" for eating sugar cane.
From 1707, punishment for rebellion included
"nailing them to the ground" and "applying fire by degrees from the feet and
hands, burning them gradually up to the head".
When in 1736 Antigua found there was to be a rebellion, five ringleaders
were broken on the wheel, 77 burned to death, six hung in cages to die of
thirst. For "lesser" crimes, castration or chopping off half the foot were
used. A manual noted: "Terror must operate to keep them in subjection."
Barbarism's consequences were clear. More than 1.5 million slaves were taken
to the British Caribbean islands in the 18th century, but by its end there
were only 600,000. By 1820, more than 10 million Africans had been
transported across the Atlantic and 2 million Europeans had moved. But the
European population grew to 12 million while the black slave population
shrank to 6 million.
If the murder of millions, and torture of millions more, is not "a crime
against humanity", these words have no meaning. To justify murder and
torture on an industrial scale, black people had to be declared inferior, or
not human. As historian James Walvin noted, there was a "form of bondage
which, from an early date, was highly racialised. By 1750, to be black in
the Americas (and often in Europe) was to be enslaved." The 1774 History of
Jamaica argued black slaves were a different species, able to work "in a
very bungling and slovenly manner, perhaps not better than an orangutan".
Material being produced today to mark the anniversary of the abolition of
the slave trade makes it appear that white people liberated black - the
assumption being they could not do it themselves. In reality, slaves rose
against the trade from its inception. This broke it.
The first recorded slave revolt was in 1570. There were at least 250
shipboard rebellions. Jamaican slave society faced a serious revolt every
decade, in addition to prolonged guerrilla war. In 1760, 30,000 Jamaican
slaves revolted. The culmination, recorded in CLR James's magisterial The
Black Jacobins, was the 1791 slave revolt in St Domingue. After abolition of
the trade, slavery in British possessions was abolished following revolts in
Barbados in 1816, Demerara in 1823, and Jamaica in 1831, in which 60,000
slaves participated. For this reason Unesco officially marks August 23, the
anniversary of the St Domingue rebellion's outbreak, as slavery's official
remembrance day.
No one denigrates William Wilberforce, but it was black resistance and
economic development that destroyed slavery, not white philanthropy.
Slavery's reality is increasingly acknowledged outside Britain. One of the
few things on which I agree with George Bush is his description of
transatlantic slavery as "one of the greatest crimes of history".
The
Virginia general assembly last month expressed "profound regret" for its
role, stating slavery "ranks as the most horrendous of all depredations of
human rights and violations of our founding ideals".
The French national
assembly declared slavery a "crime against humanity".
n 1999, Liverpool
became the first major British slaving city to formally apologise. The
Church of England Synod followed suit.
The British government's refusal of such an apology is squalid. Until
recently, almost unbelievably, it refused even to recognise the slave trade
as a crime against humanity, on the grounds that it was legal at the time.
It helped block an EU apology for slavery.
Two arguments are brought forward against official apology - not only by the
government but by David Cameron. First, an apology is unnecessary because
this happened a long time ago. This would only apply if there had been a
previously apology - there hasn't been. Slavery was the mass murder of
millions of people. Germany apologised for the Holocaust. We must for the
slave trade.
Second, that apologising is "national self-hate". This is nonsense. Love of
one's country and its achievements is based on reality, not denying it. A
Britain that contributed Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin to human
civilisation need fear comparison with no one. A British state that refuses
to apologise for a crime on such a gigantic scale as the slave trade merely
lowers our country in the opinion of the world.
It is for that reason that I invite all representatives of London society to
join me in following the example of Virginia, France, Liverpool and the
Church of England, by formally apologising for London's role in this
monstrous crime.
UK News paper.
PEACE and TOLERANCE, cost's us NOTHING, Lets ALL just do it. These are my View's and the Material's, that I have received from emails and when I surf the Internet. I do NOT and WILL NEVER approve of any form of terrorism (doing or promoting), In any Place on this Earth, especially in The OCCUPIED Palestinian Land. May The Creator of ALL thing's grant us peace and Tolerance for All
Showing posts with label Britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Britain. Show all posts
Monday, April 30, 2007
Friday, March 30, 2007
Commentary : When Will Britain and America Apologize for Slavery?
Likewise when will the man who sleeps in a White House built by Black Slaves, and U.S. legislators who work in a Capitol building built by slaves, bring themselves to make a formal government apology to the world in general and the descendants of those slaves in particular, for their role in slavery? How can they sleep and work without their conscience bothering them daily?
Peace, Curtis Sharif
Houston, Texas
"G.Waleed Kavalec" <kavalec@gmail.com> wrote:
-----
*Why I am saying sorry for London's role in this horror.*
The state failure to issue an apology for a crime as monstrous as the slave
trade diminishes Britain in the eyes of the world.
By Kenneth Robert Livingstone(Mr. Livingsrone is the Mayor of London)
Wednesday March 21, 2007
Next Sunday marks the bicentenary of the abolition of one of history's
greatest crimes - the transatlantic slave trade. The British government must
formally apologise for it. All attempts to evade this are weasel words.
Delay demeans our country. Recalling the slave trade's dimensions will show
why. Conservative estimates of the numbers transported are 10-15 million;
others range up to 30 million. Deaths started immediately, as many as 5% in
prisons before transportation and more than 10% during the voyage - the
direct murder of some 2 million people.
Conditions imposed on survivors were unimaginable. Virginia made it lawful
"to kill and destroy such negroes" who "absent themselves from ... service".
Branding and rape were commonplace.
A Jamaican planter, Thomas Thistlewood,
in 1756 had a slave "well flogged and pickled, then made Hector shit in his
mouth" for eating sugar cane.
From 1707, punishment for rebellion included
"nailing them to the ground" and "applying fire by degrees from the feet and
hands, burning them gradually up to the head".
When in 1736 Antigua found there was to be a rebellion, five ringleaders
were broken on the wheel, 77 burned to death, six hung in cages to die of
thirst. For "lesser" crimes, castration or chopping off half the foot were
used. A manual noted: "Terror must operate to keep them in subjection."
Barbarism's consequences were clear. More than 1.5 million slaves were taken
to the British Caribbean islands in the 18th century, but by its end there
were only 600,000. By 1820, more than 10 million Africans had been
transported across the Atlantic and 2 million Europeans had moved. But the
European population grew to 12 million while the black slave population
shrank to 6 million.
If the murder of millions, and torture of millions more, is not "a crime
against humanity", these words have no meaning. To justify murder and
torture on an industrial scale, black people had to be declared inferior, or
not human. As historian James Walvin noted, there was a "form of bondage
which, from an early date, was highly racialised. By 1750, to be black in
the Americas (and often in Europe) was to be enslaved." The 1774 History of
Jamaica argued black slaves were a different species, able to work "in a
very bungling and slovenly manner, perhaps not better than an orangutan".
Material being produced today to mark the anniversary of the abolition of
the slave trade makes it appear that white people liberated black - the
assumption being they could not do it themselves. In reality, slaves rose
against the trade from its inception. This broke it.
The first recorded slave revolt was in 1570. There were at least 250
shipboard rebellions. Jamaican slave society faced a serious revolt every
decade, in addition to prolonged guerrilla war. In 1760, 30,000 Jamaican
slaves revolted. The culmination, recorded in CLR James's magisterial The
Black Jacobins, was the 1791 slave revolt in St Domingue. After abolition of
the trade, slavery in British possessions was abolished following revolts in
Barbados in 1816, Demerara in 1823, and Jamaica in 1831, in which 60,000
slaves participated. For this reason Unesco officially marks August 23, the
anniversary of the St Domingue rebellion's outbreak, as slavery's official
remembrance day.
No one denigrates William Wilberforce, but it was black resistance and
economic development that destroyed slavery, not white philanthropy.
Slavery's reality is increasingly acknowledged outside Britain. One of the
few things on which I agree with George Bush is his description of
transatlantic slavery as "one of the greatest crimes of history".
The
Virginia general assembly last month expressed "profound regret" for its
role, stating slavery "ranks as the most horrendous of all depredations of
human rights and violations of our founding ideals".
The French national assembly declared slavery a "crime against humanity".
n 1999, Liverpool became the first major British slaving city to formally apologise. The Church of England Synod followed suit.
The British government's refusal of such an apology is squalid. Until
recently, almost unbelievably, it refused even to recognise the slave trade
as a crime against humanity, on the grounds that it was legal at the time.
It helped block an EU apology for slavery.
Two arguments are brought forward against official apology - not only by the
government but by David Cameron. First, an apology is unnecessary because
this happened a long time ago. This would only apply if there had been a
previously apology - there hasn't been. Slavery was the mass murder of
millions of people. Germany apologised for the Holocaust. We must for the
slave trade.
Second, that apologising is "national self-hate". This is nonsense. Love of
one's country and its achievements is based on reality, not denying it. A
Britain that contributed Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin to human
civilisation need fear comparison with no one. A British state that refuses
to apologise for a crime on such a gigantic scale as the slave trade merely
lowers our country in the opinion of the world.
It is for that reason that I invite all representatives of London society to
join me in following the example of Virginia, France, Liverpool and the
Church of England, by formally apologising for London's role in this
monstrous crime.
UK News paper.
Peace, Curtis Sharif
Houston, Texas
"G.Waleed Kavalec" <kavalec@gmail.com> wrote:
-----
*Why I am saying sorry for London's role in this horror.*
The state failure to issue an apology for a crime as monstrous as the slave
trade diminishes Britain in the eyes of the world.
By Kenneth Robert Livingstone(Mr. Livingsrone is the Mayor of London)
Wednesday March 21, 2007
Next Sunday marks the bicentenary of the abolition of one of history's
greatest crimes - the transatlantic slave trade. The British government must
formally apologise for it. All attempts to evade this are weasel words.
Delay demeans our country. Recalling the slave trade's dimensions will show
why. Conservative estimates of the numbers transported are 10-15 million;
others range up to 30 million. Deaths started immediately, as many as 5% in
prisons before transportation and more than 10% during the voyage - the
direct murder of some 2 million people.
Conditions imposed on survivors were unimaginable. Virginia made it lawful
"to kill and destroy such negroes" who "absent themselves from ... service".
Branding and rape were commonplace.
A Jamaican planter, Thomas Thistlewood,
in 1756 had a slave "well flogged and pickled, then made Hector shit in his
mouth" for eating sugar cane.
From 1707, punishment for rebellion included
"nailing them to the ground" and "applying fire by degrees from the feet and
hands, burning them gradually up to the head".
When in 1736 Antigua found there was to be a rebellion, five ringleaders
were broken on the wheel, 77 burned to death, six hung in cages to die of
thirst. For "lesser" crimes, castration or chopping off half the foot were
used. A manual noted: "Terror must operate to keep them in subjection."
Barbarism's consequences were clear. More than 1.5 million slaves were taken
to the British Caribbean islands in the 18th century, but by its end there
were only 600,000. By 1820, more than 10 million Africans had been
transported across the Atlantic and 2 million Europeans had moved. But the
European population grew to 12 million while the black slave population
shrank to 6 million.
If the murder of millions, and torture of millions more, is not "a crime
against humanity", these words have no meaning. To justify murder and
torture on an industrial scale, black people had to be declared inferior, or
not human. As historian James Walvin noted, there was a "form of bondage
which, from an early date, was highly racialised. By 1750, to be black in
the Americas (and often in Europe) was to be enslaved." The 1774 History of
Jamaica argued black slaves were a different species, able to work "in a
very bungling and slovenly manner, perhaps not better than an orangutan".
Material being produced today to mark the anniversary of the abolition of
the slave trade makes it appear that white people liberated black - the
assumption being they could not do it themselves. In reality, slaves rose
against the trade from its inception. This broke it.
The first recorded slave revolt was in 1570. There were at least 250
shipboard rebellions. Jamaican slave society faced a serious revolt every
decade, in addition to prolonged guerrilla war. In 1760, 30,000 Jamaican
slaves revolted. The culmination, recorded in CLR James's magisterial The
Black Jacobins, was the 1791 slave revolt in St Domingue. After abolition of
the trade, slavery in British possessions was abolished following revolts in
Barbados in 1816, Demerara in 1823, and Jamaica in 1831, in which 60,000
slaves participated. For this reason Unesco officially marks August 23, the
anniversary of the St Domingue rebellion's outbreak, as slavery's official
remembrance day.
No one denigrates William Wilberforce, but it was black resistance and
economic development that destroyed slavery, not white philanthropy.
Slavery's reality is increasingly acknowledged outside Britain. One of the
few things on which I agree with George Bush is his description of
transatlantic slavery as "one of the greatest crimes of history".
The
Virginia general assembly last month expressed "profound regret" for its
role, stating slavery "ranks as the most horrendous of all depredations of
human rights and violations of our founding ideals".
The French national assembly declared slavery a "crime against humanity".
n 1999, Liverpool became the first major British slaving city to formally apologise. The Church of England Synod followed suit.
The British government's refusal of such an apology is squalid. Until
recently, almost unbelievably, it refused even to recognise the slave trade
as a crime against humanity, on the grounds that it was legal at the time.
It helped block an EU apology for slavery.
Two arguments are brought forward against official apology - not only by the
government but by David Cameron. First, an apology is unnecessary because
this happened a long time ago. This would only apply if there had been a
previously apology - there hasn't been. Slavery was the mass murder of
millions of people. Germany apologised for the Holocaust. We must for the
slave trade.
Second, that apologising is "national self-hate". This is nonsense. Love of
one's country and its achievements is based on reality, not denying it. A
Britain that contributed Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin to human
civilisation need fear comparison with no one. A British state that refuses
to apologise for a crime on such a gigantic scale as the slave trade merely
lowers our country in the opinion of the world.
It is for that reason that I invite all representatives of London society to
join me in following the example of Virginia, France, Liverpool and the
Church of England, by formally apologising for London's role in this
monstrous crime.
UK News paper.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Britain Expands Litvinenko Inquiry
By Simon Saradzhyan
Staff Writer
AP - Mario Scaramella
The investigation into the poisoning death of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko is taking British police to the United States and Russia and will continue expand to wherever "the police take it," a senior British official said Sunday.
Doctors, meanwhile, said they had found a "significant quantity" of polonium-210 -- the radioactive element suspected of killing Litvinenko -- in the body of Italian researcher Mario Scaramella, who met Litvinenko the day he fell ill.
Investigators over the weekend cleared airplanes suspected of being contaminated with polonium-210 and allowed them to resume flights.
British Home Secretary John Reid said Sunday that the inquiry into Litvinenko's Nov. 23 death was expanding and would go wherever "the police take it."
"Over the next few days, I think all of these things I think will widen out a little from the circle just being here in Britain," Reid said on Sky News television.
British law enforcement officials visited the United States last week to interview former KGB officer Yury Shvets, who claims to have passed information to Litvinenko on links between the Kremlin and Yukos. British authorities also have asked the FBI for assistance.
British investigators were preparing Sunday to leave London for Moscow to interview several people, including KGB veteran Andrei Lugovoi, who also met Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, an unidentified British police official told The Associated Press. Itar-Tass said nine investigators would arrive Monday.
Lugovoi, who denies any role in the poisoning, has said Moscow doctors found no traces of polonium-210 in his body. He and a Russian associate, Dmitry Kovtun, met Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel on Nov. 1. A senior British government source told London's Daily Telegraph in Friday's issue that polonium-210 had been dropped on the floor of the hotel. Industrially produced polonium is usually encased in capsules.
Matthew Bunn of Harvard University's Managing the Atom Project said that if a "patch of contamination" was found on the floor of the hotel, the handler might have dropped the polonium-210 while transferring it from a capsule into a dispensable form that could be used to poison someone. This "suggests the level of the incompetence" of the killers, he said.
Lugovoi has said he traveled to London with his wife, children and a group of Russian soccer fans to watch a game between CSKA Moscow and London's Arsenal. British police visited Arsenal's Emirates stadium Friday.
Earlier on Nov. 1, Litvinenko met Scaramella at a sushi restaurant in central London.
London's University College Hospital said Sunday that the 36-year-old researcher had been exposed to a "significant quantity" of polonium-210 but was not showing any poisoning symptoms. Scaramella, the Italian researcher, was hospitalized and "feeling well," the hospital said in statement.
Investigators have found traces of polonium-210 at the restaurant.
Doctors said insignificant traces of the poison had been found in Litvinenko's widow.
Litvinenko, who blamed President Vladimir Putin for the poisoning in a deathbed statement, was convinced that he had been poisoned at one of the two meetings, but he did not know which, said a friend, Alex Goldfarb. Putin has strongly denied any involvement.
At the sushi restaurant, Scaramella gave Litvinenko a memo written by Yevgeny Limarev, whose father served with the KGB in the 1970s and now lives in Switzerland, researching security, the Daily Telegraph reported Saturday, citing a copy of the memo.
The memo claimed that Russian security service officers and an organization called Dignity and Honor, headed by Colonel Valentin Velichko, were trying to kill Litvinenko and his patron, self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, the newspaper said. The memo was a purported hit list that also included Scaramella and journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down in an apparent contract killing last month. Human rights activist and novelist Vladimir Bukovsky is also on the list, British tabloid News of the World reported.
A man also named Valentin Velichko -- who headed the Club of Veterans of State Security after retiring from foreign intelligence with the rank of a colonel -- played an important role in securing the release of Medecins Sans Frontieres' Dutch doctor Arjan Erkel in 2004. Erkel was kidnapped in Dagestan in 2002.
Former Dutch Ambassador Tiddo Hofstee has said he gave 1 million euros to Velichko and that Velichko collaborated with Federal Security Service officers to chart a plane to Dagestan on April 9, 2004, and win Erkel's release three days later.
Velichko has denied accepting any money.
An organization called Club Dignity and Honor/Regional Public Organization of Veterans of Special Services and Law Enforcement Agencies is registered at 15/2 Novy Arbat. Calls to this organization went unanswered Sunday. A security guard told an Ekho Moskvy reporter who visited the building over the weekend that no organization by that name operated there.
A team of three pathologists in protective gear conducted a postmortem exam on Litvinenko's body Friday. Full results are not expected to be announced for several days. The BBC reported that because of fears of radiation, Litvinenko's remains would have to be buried in a specially sealed casket.
Julia Svetlichnaja, an academic from the University of Westminster, wrote in a comment published in The Observer on Sunday that Litvinenko had told her of plans to blackmail prominent Russians. She said Litvinenko claimed access to Russian intelligence documents with information about people and companies on a Kremlin blacklist.
"He told me he was going to blackmail or sell sensitive information about all kinds of powerful people, including oligarchs, corrupt officials and sources in the Kremlin," Svetlichnaja wrote.
Svetlichnaja wrote that she "almost regretted" giving Litvinenko her e-mail, as he began feeding her information "with such gusto that in the weeks before his death I had started deleting most of his messages without opening them."
Svetlichnaja did not respond to an e-mail for comment Sunday.
The Observer reported that Litvinenko had claimed in the weeks before his death that he had a file with damaging revelations about the Kremlin and its relationship with Yukos. The file was complied by Shvets, the former KGB agent who until recently lived in Virginia, an associate of Shvets told the Observer.
Shvets said by telephone last week that he had what he believed was a credible lead in the case, but he declined to elaborate. He said he was now in hiding.
Mikhail Trepashkin, an imprisoned former FSB officer, said in a letter released Friday that he had warned Litvinenko several years ago that the FSB had formed a unit to kill him, Berezovsky and other Kremlin foes. Trepashkin said he was invited to join the unit in 2002.
Trepashkin, who like Litvinenko accused the FSB of being behind the 1999 apartment bombings, received a four-year prison sentence on May 19 after being convicted of revealing state secrets and illegally carrying a pistol in his car.
Trepashkin said in his letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, that authorities had put him in a cell contaminated with poisonous chemicals and threatened to kill him after his arrest.
"Litvinenko and I aren't the last in this chain of victims of persecution," he wrote. Maybe Litvinenko's death "could make you believe in what he was saying."
It was unclear whether scientists had determined the origin of the polonium-210. The Guardian has speculated that the polonium could have come from "the principal plant" in the Krasnoyarsk region.
The report was denied by the largest nuclear facility in the region, the Zheleznogorsk Mining and Chemical Combine. A plant manager, Viktor Ovsyannikov, said the plant had no polonium, the VolgaPolitInfo news agency reported. An official in the plant director's office declined to comment on the issue Friday.
The plant stores spent nuclear fuel and has a reactor designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium, according to the web site of Bellona, a Norwegian-based environmental watchdog.
Alexander Koldobsky, professor with the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, confirmed that it would be "more or less" possible to trace the nuclear reactor that produced the polonium-210. Polonium is usually produced from bismuth in a reactor.
Traces of polonium have been found at more than a dozen locations across London, including Litvinenko's home and Berezovsky's office. British authorities last week also found radiation on three British Airways planes that flew between London and Moscow. After being checked, the planes were been allowed to resume flights.
Russian authorities delayed a Finnair flight in Moscow on Saturday in a radiation scare. No radiation was found.
British authorities also have cleared two easyJet planes that Scaramella flew to Britain to meet Litvinenko and back to Italy.
Bunn, the Harvard specialist, expressed bewilderment by the discovery of radiation at so many locations. He said that while Litvinenko might have left traces of polonium through his sweat after he was poisoned, it was a mystery how the substances entered the planes.
He said the two most logical explanations were that the person carrying the polonium had been contaminated himself or that investigators were confusing low concentrations of the substance that occur naturally with the poison in the Litvinenko case.
Staff Writers Kevin O'Flynn and Carl Schreck contributed to this report.
Staff Writer
AP - Mario Scaramella
The investigation into the poisoning death of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko is taking British police to the United States and Russia and will continue expand to wherever "the police take it," a senior British official said Sunday.
Doctors, meanwhile, said they had found a "significant quantity" of polonium-210 -- the radioactive element suspected of killing Litvinenko -- in the body of Italian researcher Mario Scaramella, who met Litvinenko the day he fell ill.
Investigators over the weekend cleared airplanes suspected of being contaminated with polonium-210 and allowed them to resume flights.
British Home Secretary John Reid said Sunday that the inquiry into Litvinenko's Nov. 23 death was expanding and would go wherever "the police take it."
"Over the next few days, I think all of these things I think will widen out a little from the circle just being here in Britain," Reid said on Sky News television.
British law enforcement officials visited the United States last week to interview former KGB officer Yury Shvets, who claims to have passed information to Litvinenko on links between the Kremlin and Yukos. British authorities also have asked the FBI for assistance.
British investigators were preparing Sunday to leave London for Moscow to interview several people, including KGB veteran Andrei Lugovoi, who also met Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, an unidentified British police official told The Associated Press. Itar-Tass said nine investigators would arrive Monday.
Lugovoi, who denies any role in the poisoning, has said Moscow doctors found no traces of polonium-210 in his body. He and a Russian associate, Dmitry Kovtun, met Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel on Nov. 1. A senior British government source told London's Daily Telegraph in Friday's issue that polonium-210 had been dropped on the floor of the hotel. Industrially produced polonium is usually encased in capsules.
Matthew Bunn of Harvard University's Managing the Atom Project said that if a "patch of contamination" was found on the floor of the hotel, the handler might have dropped the polonium-210 while transferring it from a capsule into a dispensable form that could be used to poison someone. This "suggests the level of the incompetence" of the killers, he said.
Lugovoi has said he traveled to London with his wife, children and a group of Russian soccer fans to watch a game between CSKA Moscow and London's Arsenal. British police visited Arsenal's Emirates stadium Friday.
Earlier on Nov. 1, Litvinenko met Scaramella at a sushi restaurant in central London.
London's University College Hospital said Sunday that the 36-year-old researcher had been exposed to a "significant quantity" of polonium-210 but was not showing any poisoning symptoms. Scaramella, the Italian researcher, was hospitalized and "feeling well," the hospital said in statement.
Investigators have found traces of polonium-210 at the restaurant.
Doctors said insignificant traces of the poison had been found in Litvinenko's widow.
Litvinenko, who blamed President Vladimir Putin for the poisoning in a deathbed statement, was convinced that he had been poisoned at one of the two meetings, but he did not know which, said a friend, Alex Goldfarb. Putin has strongly denied any involvement.
At the sushi restaurant, Scaramella gave Litvinenko a memo written by Yevgeny Limarev, whose father served with the KGB in the 1970s and now lives in Switzerland, researching security, the Daily Telegraph reported Saturday, citing a copy of the memo.
The memo claimed that Russian security service officers and an organization called Dignity and Honor, headed by Colonel Valentin Velichko, were trying to kill Litvinenko and his patron, self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, the newspaper said. The memo was a purported hit list that also included Scaramella and journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down in an apparent contract killing last month. Human rights activist and novelist Vladimir Bukovsky is also on the list, British tabloid News of the World reported.
A man also named Valentin Velichko -- who headed the Club of Veterans of State Security after retiring from foreign intelligence with the rank of a colonel -- played an important role in securing the release of Medecins Sans Frontieres' Dutch doctor Arjan Erkel in 2004. Erkel was kidnapped in Dagestan in 2002.
Former Dutch Ambassador Tiddo Hofstee has said he gave 1 million euros to Velichko and that Velichko collaborated with Federal Security Service officers to chart a plane to Dagestan on April 9, 2004, and win Erkel's release three days later.
Velichko has denied accepting any money.
An organization called Club Dignity and Honor/Regional Public Organization of Veterans of Special Services and Law Enforcement Agencies is registered at 15/2 Novy Arbat. Calls to this organization went unanswered Sunday. A security guard told an Ekho Moskvy reporter who visited the building over the weekend that no organization by that name operated there.
A team of three pathologists in protective gear conducted a postmortem exam on Litvinenko's body Friday. Full results are not expected to be announced for several days. The BBC reported that because of fears of radiation, Litvinenko's remains would have to be buried in a specially sealed casket.
Julia Svetlichnaja, an academic from the University of Westminster, wrote in a comment published in The Observer on Sunday that Litvinenko had told her of plans to blackmail prominent Russians. She said Litvinenko claimed access to Russian intelligence documents with information about people and companies on a Kremlin blacklist.
"He told me he was going to blackmail or sell sensitive information about all kinds of powerful people, including oligarchs, corrupt officials and sources in the Kremlin," Svetlichnaja wrote.
Svetlichnaja wrote that she "almost regretted" giving Litvinenko her e-mail, as he began feeding her information "with such gusto that in the weeks before his death I had started deleting most of his messages without opening them."
Svetlichnaja did not respond to an e-mail for comment Sunday.
The Observer reported that Litvinenko had claimed in the weeks before his death that he had a file with damaging revelations about the Kremlin and its relationship with Yukos. The file was complied by Shvets, the former KGB agent who until recently lived in Virginia, an associate of Shvets told the Observer.
Shvets said by telephone last week that he had what he believed was a credible lead in the case, but he declined to elaborate. He said he was now in hiding.
Mikhail Trepashkin, an imprisoned former FSB officer, said in a letter released Friday that he had warned Litvinenko several years ago that the FSB had formed a unit to kill him, Berezovsky and other Kremlin foes. Trepashkin said he was invited to join the unit in 2002.
Trepashkin, who like Litvinenko accused the FSB of being behind the 1999 apartment bombings, received a four-year prison sentence on May 19 after being convicted of revealing state secrets and illegally carrying a pistol in his car.
Trepashkin said in his letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, that authorities had put him in a cell contaminated with poisonous chemicals and threatened to kill him after his arrest.
"Litvinenko and I aren't the last in this chain of victims of persecution," he wrote. Maybe Litvinenko's death "could make you believe in what he was saying."
It was unclear whether scientists had determined the origin of the polonium-210. The Guardian has speculated that the polonium could have come from "the principal plant" in the Krasnoyarsk region.
The report was denied by the largest nuclear facility in the region, the Zheleznogorsk Mining and Chemical Combine. A plant manager, Viktor Ovsyannikov, said the plant had no polonium, the VolgaPolitInfo news agency reported. An official in the plant director's office declined to comment on the issue Friday.
The plant stores spent nuclear fuel and has a reactor designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium, according to the web site of Bellona, a Norwegian-based environmental watchdog.
Alexander Koldobsky, professor with the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, confirmed that it would be "more or less" possible to trace the nuclear reactor that produced the polonium-210. Polonium is usually produced from bismuth in a reactor.
Traces of polonium have been found at more than a dozen locations across London, including Litvinenko's home and Berezovsky's office. British authorities last week also found radiation on three British Airways planes that flew between London and Moscow. After being checked, the planes were been allowed to resume flights.
Russian authorities delayed a Finnair flight in Moscow on Saturday in a radiation scare. No radiation was found.
British authorities also have cleared two easyJet planes that Scaramella flew to Britain to meet Litvinenko and back to Italy.
Bunn, the Harvard specialist, expressed bewilderment by the discovery of radiation at so many locations. He said that while Litvinenko might have left traces of polonium through his sweat after he was poisoned, it was a mystery how the substances entered the planes.
He said the two most logical explanations were that the person carrying the polonium had been contaminated himself or that investigators were confusing low concentrations of the substance that occur naturally with the poison in the Litvinenko case.
Staff Writers Kevin O'Flynn and Carl Schreck contributed to this report.
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