Shame on UK for Sham Litvinenko Trial – OpEd

What started off as a massive fabrication in 2006 just received a great boost from a complicit British government. The mysterious polonium death of reputed former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko is the focus.

An inexplicably long series of official UK hearings on this nearly 9 year old case has just concluded. That’s prompted a new flurry of sensational media reports.

A recent Daily Mail headline reads “Putin ‘personally ordered Litvinenko’s murder.'” The Irish Independent said, “Vladimir Putin should be held responsible for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.” BBC reported, “Vladimir Putin ‘ordered killing’, Litvinenko [official UK] inquiry hears.”

They support a premise that’s been around since the beginning. It implicates Russian president Vladimir Putin in the yet-to-be explained death.

You might think that reliable evidence has been presented to back up all the accusations. But careful examination shows the reports are no more than unsubstantiated allegations. No reliable facts are reported. Meanwhile, there is an abundance of evidence that this has been a nefarious witch hunt all along.

The official UK hearing has been made out to be a kind of trial, one aimed at bringing justice in the mysterious death case. The widow Marina Litvinenko told BBC, “The truth has finally been uncovered.”

That’s actually quite the opposite of the truth. Here are some facts:

• The prosecutor in the case was unable to unearth any incriminating factual evidence, only “grave suspicions” about Russian culpability. He never had a sufficient case to bring to trial.
• The current official inquiry has no capability to mete out justice. It hasn’t been a real trial at all. There are accused individuals. But they have no right to question their accusers. The inquiry doesn’t have the ability to convict anybody.
• No coroner has ever ruled that Litvinenko’s death was even a homicide. That leaves open the possibility of accidental poisoning or suicide.
• The KGB spy moniker given Litvinenko in the media is fallacious; he never did espionage work. But it added spice to all the misleading headlines.
• Litvinenko himself is on record believing an Italian named Mario Scaramella poisoned him.
• The “Putin did it” scenario that went mainstream was a highly successful fraud of massive proportion. It was instigated by Putin arch enemy Boris Berezovsky, a Russian robber baron who was hiding out in London from criminal prosecution back home. Berezovsky was angling to see Putin overthrown in a violent revolution and replaced by a monarch. No kidding. I’m not just alleging that. He said so in his own words.
• A rogue coroner dodged his statutory duty to rule on the manner and cause of death, and instead conducted a Berezovskyesque witch hunt for Russian culpability.
• He subsequently was told by Home Secretary Theresa May to cut out the witch hunt and perform his duty to rule on the manner and cause of death. She also told him that any further official inquiry was unnecessary.
• That would have ended the folly for good. But instead Prime Minister David Cameron reversed the Home Secretary and reopened the witch hunt. This came amidst the sanctions frenzy against Putin over the Ukraine crisis. It was a highly politicized move, not a search for justice.
• The result has been the just-concluded hearings, part of Cameron’s official inquiry.

Cameron has charged forward despite the obvious speciousness of the case. It’s not hard to see that fraud has been afoot all along. For instance, there was a widely-reported deathbed statement dictated by Litvinenko. News of it didn’t come out until after Litvinenko’s death. The statement blames Putin for the poisoning.

But I’ve found that Litvinenko never dictated any such statement. The story was a hoax. The hoaxer has even confessed that the words were his own, and that he had no factual basis for his allegation.

Isn’t Cameron aware of these specious claims in the Litvinenko case? If there is a real evidentiary basis, why is the record founded on outright fabrications like the deathbed statement? The case is replete with nonsense like the deathbed hoax.

So the truth that needs to be known is that the Litvinenko case has been a fraud right from the start, and continues as such to this day. I don’t know whether or not Putin or any other Russian had complicity in the death. But I do know that principals behind the accusations have been lying.

The biggest news here is that Cameron has put the weight of the UK government behind the fraud. What an extravagant affront to justice. He should be ashamed of himself.