Vlad "The Poisoner" Putin should be presumed innocent until proven guilty

[BurtWorm]

True or false?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6159927.stm


Mr Litvinenko died last week in a London hospital

Radiation found at 12 locations

Experts probing the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko have found traces of radioactivity at 12 locations, the home secretary has said.

Among them are two British Airways (BA) planes. A third one is awaiting checks.

Home Secretary John Reid told Parliament that two Russian aircraft, one of which is currently at Heathrow airport, were also of interest.

However, Mr Reid stressed the public health risk was low. BA is contacting 33,000 passengers from 221 flights.

Mr Litvinenko, an ex-KGB agent and a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died last week of radiation poisoning....


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See also:


Mr Yushchenko's appearance changed almost overnight

and


Former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar is being treated in a Moscow hospital after falling violently ill on a trip to Ireland on 24 November.

[Briar]

1. Your heading presumes the opposite

but personally I stand by innocent until proved guilty. It's essential. Otherwise we get the sort of attitude that had five Imams humialiated and punished for being muslim while flying.

[BurtWorm]

2. The Poisoner won't be tried under this system.

He won't be tried at all. I doubt anybody is going to pay for radiating 3 airplanes to kill one man.

[kiahzero]

3. Yes, innocent until proven guilty.

However, we need not apply the criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" for public discussion. If the preponderance of the evidence indicates he's guilty, it's certainly fair to believe he is guilty for the purpose of discussion.

[Vanje]

4. Anna Politkovskaya

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-10-07-russia-journalist_x.htm

Not poisoned exactly....Well, lead poisoning, in a way. Acute. Very acute lead poisoning.

"Anna Politkovskaya, who had chronicled Russian military abuses against civilians in Chechnya in the outspoken newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was found dead Saturday in the elevator in her building. She had two gunshot wounds — one to the head."

[thingfisher]

5. Anna Politkovskaya,

was very critical of Putin. Before her murder she was very outspoken about the curtailment of the free press that blossomed for a short time, Chechnya and its horrors and government corruption and that included Putin. She was an intimate friend of the recently poisoned Mr. Litvinenko.
There seems to be an unmistakable pattern here of assassination of those opposed by the Putin regime. This should at least place Putin under a shadow of suspicion. I doubt that he will do much to aide the investigation of these crimes.
The following story comes from the BBC online site:

The death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has not been nearly as extensively reported in Russia as it has in Britain.
The photographs of Mr Litvinenko - wasted and near death in his hospital bed - have not been widely reproduced in the Russian press.

The Kremlin has consistently rejected any suggestions of Russian government or secret service involvement in Mr Litvinenko's death.
"Any death is always a tragedy," President Putin's deputy spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the BBC.
"Now it's up to UK law enforcement agencies to investigate what happened."
'Absurd' claims
Mr Peskov bluntly dismissed any idea that Moscow might have been to blame.
"We've already said that this is completely absurd," he said.
Konstantin Kosachev, of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee, offered condolences to those who knew Mr Litvinenko, but added: "I don't see any reason for our special services to carry out such an operation."

Instead, he suggested it was enemies of Russia, whom he declined to name, who would benefit from Mr Litvinenko's death.
The ex-spy was said to be probing the death of Anna Politkovskaya
That is really how reaction to the case of Mr Litvinenko has been divided here.

Kremlin supporters have essentially said that Mr Litvinenko was not enough of a threat to Mr Putin's regime to have merited being the target of such an apparently sophisticated plot.
That is not the way Mr Litvinenko's friends and family see it.

At the time he was taken ill, Mr Litvinenko was said to be investigating the death of the Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya.
She was an implacable critic of President Putin's administration.
Her articles had catalogued human rights abuses in the war-torn southern Russian region of Chechnya.
She was gunned down last month in the entrance to her home.


No-one has yet been arrested or charged in connection with her killing.
Mr Litvinenko had publicly blamed the Kremlin for Politkovskaya's death.
He had also written a book accusing the FSB, the Russian secret service in which he once served as an officer, of blowing up a series of apartment blocks in Russia in 1999.
Some 300 people were killed in the explosions.

The Russian authorities blamed Chechen militants for the explosions.
In response, Russia launched a major military offensive against the breakaway region.

Little can be said with certainty about the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

Medical explanations which were once confidently reported have since been dismissed.

Amid claim, counter-claim and denial, the truth is so far impossible to discern.

Some security experts in Moscow point to the fact that Mr Litvinenko's time in the FSB was spent fighting corruption and other criminal activity.

In Russia in the 1990s, that was a dangerous profession - and one where it would have been easy to make deadly enemies.

London associates

In London, Mr Litvinenko, associated with Boris Berezovsky, a Russian tycoon and former Kremlin insider turned Kremlin critic, and Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen separatist.

Russia wants both men extradited to face criminal charges.

Both Mr Berezovsky and Mr Zakayev have denied any wrongdoing.

Britain has refused to extradite them. Their continuing residence in London infuriates Moscow.

Scotland Yard have yet to launch a murder inquiry.

But if Mr Litvinenko's death was murder, the many sides of his life may make his killer difficult to find whether the answers to the case are here in Moscow, or elsewhere.

[BurtWorm]

6. Someone at the very peak of power in Russia, anyway

seems to be fond of using murder and mayhem as a tool of political expression.

[conscious evolution]

7. I agree

The fact that the MSM is trying to paint him as a monster who would think nothing of murdering opposition makes me think that there is more to this then meets the eye.Such stories remind me of how they treat Chavez and others.Just because the MSM says something doesn't neccisarily make it true.
To me it sounds like a disinfo campaign perpretrated by other parties.Parties that would rather see him gone.