Suspicions Cast on Russia After Poisoning

By STEVE GUTTERMAN
Associated Press Writer
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-russia-poison-problem,0,6892127.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
December 14, 2004, 2:21 PM EST

MOSCOW -- In the bloodstained post-Soviet period, feuds over money and power have often been solved by bullets or bombs. But confirmation that Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko was disfigured by dioxin draws attention to suspicious cases in Russia in which poison may have been used to silence political foes and settle business scores.

As Yushchenko's supporters suggest Russian involvement in the attempt to hurt or kill him, critics of the Kremlin say poisoning is a Soviet-era practice that seems to have reappeared since ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin became president and put many of his colleagues from the spy agency into positions of power.

"The list is rather long, and since Putin assumed power in Russia, poisoning has been one of the preferred political tools used by the Kremlin," said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent Russian military affairs analyst.

Yuri Shchekochikhin, a liberal Russian lawmaker and journalist who crusaded against corruption, died in July 2003 after apparently suffering a severe allergic reaction. Colleagues suspect he was poisoned, probably in connection with his reports on a case involving customs officials and allegations that a furniture store evaded millions of dollars in import duties.

Russia's chief prosecutor's office told Shchekochikhin's colleagues at the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and at the Yabloko political party there was no evidence he was poisoned, Yabloko spokeswoman Yevgenia Dilendorf said. But she said a British laboratory that conducted tests for the paper and the party found that there were signs of poison.

"We unequivocally believe that Shchekochikhin was poisoned," said Vyacheslav Izmailov, a reporter and columnist at the paper.

Izmailov said the same was true for Anna Politkovskaya, a Novaya Gazeta journalist and Kremlin critic who fell seriously ill with symptoms of food poisoning after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia during the hostage crisis in Beslan. At least two other journalists accused authorities of trying to stop them from covering the standoff.

Izmailov points a finger at Russian intelligence agencies such as the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor of the KGB.

He and Felgenhauer also said Chechen rebels held in Russian jails have been poisoned. While those cases have not been confirmed, the FSB has said its operatives killed Omar Ibn al-Khattab, a Saudi-born militant who fought alongside the rebels in Chechnya and died in 2002. Khattab's relatives say he was poisoned.

"Poisoning is not the only method the security services use to remove people who are inconvenient for them, but it's one of them," Izmailov said.

Felgenhauer said Russian security forces showed their propensity for using lethal substances when they pumped a knockout gas into a Moscow theater seized by Chechen rebels in 2002. Most of the 129 deaths of hostages were attributed to the gas.

"These substances were mostly developed during Soviet times, under the auspices of the KGB," Felgenhauer said. "And the specialists who designed these kinds of poisons and ways of applying them were trained during Soviet times."

The most notorious Soviet-era case of political poisoning allegedly involving the KGB was that of Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov, who died in London in 1978 after a pellet containing ricin was injected into his thigh -- purportedly by a jab with a rigged umbrella.

The alleged cases of poisoning in the former Soviet Union are not limited to Russia. In Belarus, where critics of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko have disappeared and are feared dead, the wife of opposition leader Gennady Karpenko has claimed he was poisoned shortly before his death in 1999.

Associates of Yushchenko speculate that Russian or former KGB agents may have been involved in poisoning the candidate. Yushchenko fell ill in September and has campaigned with his face disfigured by what doctors who treated him in Austria said last week was poisoning by dioxin.

Supporters say Yushchenko's opponents wanted to kill him or sideline him from the race against Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was backed by outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and the Kremlin, which holds great influence in the former Soviet republic of 48 million people.

The Kremlin has had no reaction to the developments surrounding Yushchenko's health. Kuchma's spokeswoman Olena Gromnystka had no comment when asked if Kuchma had anything to do with the poisoning. Yanukovych reacted by saying he sympathized with his rival, that he wished him "no evil" and demanded a thorough investigation.

Some suspected poisonings do not appear politically motivated. Around the same time Yushchenko was sickened, prominent St. Petersburg security company chief Roman Tsepov died after suffering symptoms of severe food poisoning.

Russian media reported that Tsepov was murdered with a massive dose of a leukemia drug, though prosecutors said Tuesday they have not confirmed he was poisoned.

A company run by Tsepov once provided security to Putin when he was a bureaucrat in St. Petersburg, but that was not seen as a factor in his death. Tsepov survived three assassination attempts in the 1990s and had ties to lucrative businesses that could have made him a target.

Nevertheless, the small but growing list of suspected cases shows that poisoning is "not random -- that it's a way of dealing with political leaders," Dilendorf said.

It's frightening, she said, "because it means that it's possible to dispose of anyone and go unpunished -- absolutely unpunished. And it's very hard to prove."