Human error, computer failures and stray swans – the little mistakes that could have ended the world.
Pictures were today released of the crude-looking trigger, ironically
modelled after a Colt Peacemaker gun, that would launch the missiles
from one of Britain’s four nuclear submarines.
Lieutenant Commander Woods, the man tasked with pulling that trigger,
described the responsibility as "both an honour and a burden".
"Once the missile has left the submarine there is no self-destruct button.
"Once it's gone from here, it is effectively 'fire and forget' - it is going to reach its target.”
But will those terrible weapons ever be launched?
Here are eight times that we narrowly escaped the horror of all-out nuclear war:
November 5, 1956: The Suez Crisis
A bizarre cluster of coincidences nearly spelled the end of
civilisation. Four things made the Nato allies think that the Soviets
were about to strike: suspicious Russian fleet movements; a large flight
of Russian fighter planes over Syria; the ‘shooting down’ of an RAF
Canberra in the same region and a large flight of ‘unidentified
aircraft’ over Turkey.
All were later explained as (respectively) a routine naval exercise, an
escort for the Syrian president’s jet that had been overestimated by
observers, a mechanical failure on the RAF bomber, and a radar operator
mistakenly identifying a flight of swans.
November 24, 1961: Please stay on the line
On the night of November 24, 1961, three Ballistic Missile Early
Warning Sites in three countries suddenly went quiet. US Strategic Air
Command was immediately placed on full alert. There was, theoretically,
no explanation for why the completely separate phone lines for stations
in Greenland, Alaska and Fylingdales in England should be cut unless a
Soviet strike had taken them out.
Well, unless all three lines were routed through one exchange in
Colorado which had suffered a generator failure - as if anyone would
make a mistake like that!
Bomber crews in the US were scrambled to their aircraft and they
started their engines. Luckily, Strategic Air Command had a B-52 bomber
already on patrol over Greenland and the crew was able to confirm that
no strike had taken place.
October 25, 1962: A Russian bear?
At around midnight on a chilly night in Duluth, Minnesota, a guard at a
US military facility saw an ‘intruder’ climbing a perimeter fence. He
challenged the interloper and, receiving no response, opened fire. He
then activated a security alarm.
The alarm was linked to the alarms of other military facilities in the
area, so their klaxons sounded too. Unfortunately at one of the
facilities in question, Volk Field, Wisconsin, the alarm had been
incorrectly wired, and it triggered the siren that ordered nuclear armed
F-106A interceptors to take off. The pilots were sure that there would
be no practice alert drills while Defcon 3 was in force, and they
believed World War III had started.
Immediate communication with the source in Duluth showed a mistake had
been made. By this time aircraft were taxing onto the runway. A car was
dispatched from the command centre and successfully signalled the
aircraft to stop.
The original intruder was later identified as a bear.
October 27, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis
In the wake of the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, the Soviet Union made plans to station nuclear missiles in Cuba. Then an
American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, and another – despite a
presidential order forbidding all flights over the Soviet Union – was
almost intercepted over Siberia.
The pilot’s high-tech navigational systems had failed and he was
finding his way using a sextant. International tensions were at an
all-time high. Only the intervention of a Soviet naval officer named
Vasili Arkhipov prevented the launch of a nuclear-tipped torpedo that
could easily have precipitated global nuclear Armageddon.
November 9, 1979: Computer says ‘no’
A computer test at US radar tracking facility Norad failed, creating
‘false positive’ indications of an all-out Soviet nuclear launch.
With the atmosphere of panic so high inside Norad, no one thought to
use the ‘red telephone’ hotline to clarify the situation with the USSR
and it was not until other early-warning radar systems confirmed no such
attack had taken place that Norad realized that a computer system test
had caused the display errors.
September 26, 1983: Near miss
This time it was the Soviets’ turn to suffer a false alarm. An
equipment failure caused the Soviet nuclear early-warning system to
display notifications of American Minuteman intercontinental ballistic
missiles being launched from bases in the United States.
A potentially disastrous ‘retaliation’ was averted by Soviet Air
Defence Forces officer Stanislav Petrov, who realised the system had
simply malfunctioned.
November 2, 1983 to November 11, 1983: Able Archer
Operation Able Archer 83 was a ten-day Nato exercise simulating a
period of conflict escalation leading up to all-out nuclear war. Some
inside the Soviet Politburo and armed forces feared that the exercise
was a cover for a pre-emptive Nato strike on the USSR, and responded by
placing their own forces on high alert.
For a week the world hung on a precipice, with even the slightest
mistake potentially triggering a nuclear holocaust. Once the exercise
ended, nervous fingers receded from the ‘big red button’.
January 25, 1995: The wrong kind of rocket
An unarmed rocket launched from Norway to research the aurora borealis
was detected by the Russian Federation's Olenegorsk early warning
station. Mistaken for a Trident missile by radar operators it caused a
full-scale nuclear panic. President Boris Yeltsin was summoned and the
Cheget nuclear briefcase was activated for the first and only time.
Further plotting of the object’s course, however, revealed that it was
not going to land within Russian borders. Later inquiries determined
that, while the rocket scientists had informed 30 states including
Russia about the test launch, the information had not reached Russian
radar technicians.
Perhaps we should be comforted by the fact that, in all of these cases,
someone thought to check before pulling the trigger on the
‘Peacemaker’. Let’s hope we stay that lucky.
The Millennium hotel is an unusual spot for a murder. It overlooks
Grosvenor Square, and is practically next door to the heavily guarded US
embassy, where, it is rumoured, the CIA has its station on the fourth
floor. A statue of Franklin D Roosevelt – wearing a large cape and
holding a stick – dominates the north side of the square. In 2011
another statue would appear: that of the late US president Ronald
Reagan. An inscription hails Reagan’s contribution to world history and
his “determined intervention to end the cold war”. A friendly tribute
from Mikhail Gorbachev reads: “With President Reagan, we travelled the
world from confrontation to cooperation.”
The quotes would seem mordantly ironic in the light of events that
took place just around the corner, and amid Vladimir Putin’s apparent
attempt to turn the clock back to 1982, when the former KGB boss Yuri
Andropov – the secret policeman’s secret policeman – was in charge of a
doomed empire known as the Soviet Union. Next to the inscriptions is a
sandy-coloured chunk of masonry. It is a piece of the Berlin Wall,
retrieved from the east side. Reagan, the monument says, defeated
communism. This was an enduring triumph for the west, democratic values,
and for free societies everywhere.
Five hundred metres away is Grosvenor Street. It was here, in
mid-October 2006, that two Russian assassins had tried to murder
someone, unsuccessfully. The hitmen were Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry
Kovtun. Their target was Alexander Litvinenko,
a former officer in Russia’s FSB spy agency. Litvinenko had fled Moscow
in 2000. In exile in Britain he had become Putin’s most ebullient and
needling critic. He was a writer and journalist. And – from 2003 onwards
– a British agent, employed by MI6 as an expert on Russian organised
crime.
Latterly, Litvinenko had been supplying Her Majesty’s spooks and
their Spanish counterparts with hair-raising information about the
Russian mafia in Spain. The mafia had extensive contacts with senior
Russian politicians. The trail apparently led to the president’s office,
and dated back to the 1990s when Putin, then aide to St Petersburg’s
mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, worked closely with gangsters. In a week or so,
Litvinenko was to testify before a Spanish prosecutor. Hence, it
appeared, the Kremlin’s frantic efforts to kill him.
The men from Moscow were carrying what Kovtun confessed to a friend
was “a very expensive poison”. About its properties he knew little. The
poison was polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope, tiny, invisible,
undetectable. Ingested, it was fatal. The polonium had originated at a
nuclear reactor in the Urals and a production line in the Russian town
of Sarov. A secret FSB laboratory, the agency’s “research institute”,
then converted it into a dinkily portable weapon.
Lugovoi and Kovtun, however, were rubbish assassins. The quality of
Moscow’s hired killers had slipped since the glory days of the KGB.
Their first attempt, in a Grosvenor Street boardroom, had not worked.
They had lured Litvinenko to a business meeting, where – the radiation
stain later showed – they had tipped polonium into his cup or glass. But
Litvinenko did not touch his drink. As of 1 November 2006, he was
stubbornly alive.
Like most upmarket London hotels, the Millennium has CCTV. Its
multiplex system can run up to 48 cameras; that day, 41 of them were
operational. The cameras work on a time-lapse system. They take an image
every two seconds; the video is retained for 31 days. This footage has a
jerky quality, a little like the early days of cinema – images jump;
people appear and vanish; life ebbs and flows. And yet it is an honest
record. A time stamp – days, hours, minutes – fixes everything. The
stills offer a miraculous time machine, a journey into verisimilitude.
Even modern CCTV has its limitations. Some parts of the Millennium
were not covered by it – as Lugovoi, an expert in surveillance, and a
former Kremlin bodyguard, would have noticed. One camera was fixed above
the reception desk. Its footage shows the check-in counter; a bank of
three computer screens; uniformed hotel staff. In the left of the
picture is a part view of the foyer. There are two white leather sofas
and a chair. Another camera – you wouldn’t notice it, unless you were
looking – records the steps leading up to the lavatories.
The hotel has two ground-floor bars accessed from the foyer. There is
a large restaurant and cafe. And the smaller Pine Bar immediately on
the left as you enter through a revolving door from the street. The bar
is a cosy wood-panelled affair. Three bay windows look out onto the
square. In CCTV terms, the Pine Bar is a security black hole. It has no
cameras; its guests are invisible.
On the evening of 31 October, camera 14 recorded this: at 20:04 a man
dressed in a black leather jacket and mustard yellow jumper approaches
the front desk. On either side of him are two young women. They have
long, groomed blonde hair: his daughters. Another figure wanders up from
the sofas. He is a strikingly tall, chunky-looking bloke wearing a
padded black jacket and what resembles a hand-knitted Harry Potter
scarf. The scarf is red and blue – the colours of Moscow’s CSKA football
club.
Andrei Lugovoi with his two daughters at the reception desk of the Millennium hotel... Refer to original article to see video.
The video captures the moment the Lugovois checked in – on this, his
third frantic trip to London in three weeks, Lugovoi arrived with his
entire family. He came from Moscow with his wife Svetlana, daughter
Galina, eight-year-old son Igor, and friend Vyacheslav Sokolenko – the
guy with the scarf. At the hotel, Lugovoi met his other daughter
Tatiana. She had arrived from Moscow a day earlier with her boyfriend
Maxim Bejak. The family party was due to watch CSKA Moscow play Arsenal
in the Champions League the following evening. Like Lugovoi, Sokolenko
was ex-KGB. But Sokolenko was not, British detectives would conclude, a
murderer.
CCTV
shows Kovtun arriving at the Millennium at 08.32 the next day – a
diminutive figure carrying a black bag over one shoulder. The events of
the next few hours were to become infamous – with Litvinenko the fated
victim, the Russian state an avenging god, the media a sort of
overexcited Greek chorus. What actually took place was a piece of
improvisation that might easily have misfired. Lugovoi and Kovtun had
decided to lure Litvinenko to a further meeting. But the evidence
suggests that they had still not figured out how exactly they were going
to kill him.
Litvinenko had first met Lugovoi in Russia in the 1990s. Both were
members of the oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s entourage. Later, while
living in exile in London, Berezovsky became Litvinenko’s mercurial
patron. In 2005, Lugovoi recontacted Litvinenko and suggested they work
together, advising western firms wanting to invest in Russia.
At 11.41am, Lugovoi called Litvinenko on his mobile. He suggested a
meeting. Why didn’t Litvinenko join him later that day at the
Millennium? Litvinenko said yes; the plot was on.
Scotland Yard would later precisely fix Litvinenko’s movements on the
afternoon of 1 November: a bus from his home in Muswell Hill in north
London; the tube to Piccadilly Circus; a 3pm lunch with his Italian
associate Mario Scaramella in the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly.
In between, he fielded several calls from Lugovoi, who was becoming
increasingly importunate. Lugovoi called Litvinenko again at 3.40pm. He
told Litvinenko to “hurry up”. He had, he said, to leave imminently to
watch the football.
Lugovoi would tell British detectives that he arrived at the
Millennium at 4pm. The CCTV shows that he was lying: half an hour
earlier, at 3.32pm, Lugovoi appears at the front desk and asks for
directions to the gents. Another camera, number four, records him
walking up the stairs from the foyer. The image is striking. Lugovoi
seems preoccupied. He is unusually pale, grim, grey-visaged. His left
hand is concealed in a jacket pocket. Two minutes later, he emerges. The
camera offers an unflattering close-up of his bald spot.
Lugovoi walking up the stairs from the Millennium hotel foyer. The image
is striking. ‘Lugovoi seems preoccupied. He’s unusually pale, grim,
grey visaged. His left hand is concealed in a jacket pocket...Refer to Original article for video.
Then, at 3.45pm, Kovtun repeats the same procedure, asking for
directions, vanishing into the men’s toilets, reappearing three minutes
later. He is a slight figure. What were the pair doing there? Washing
their hands, having set the polonium trap? Or preparing the crime, a
heinous one, in the sanctuary of one of the cubicles?
Tests were to show massive alpha radiation contamination in the
second cubicle on the left – 2,600 counts per second on the door, 200 on
the flush handle. Further sources of polonium were found on and below
the gents’ hand-dryer, at over 5,000 counts per second. There was what
scientists called “full-scale deflection” – readings so high they were
off the scale.
Dmitry Kovtun arrives at the Millennium
The multiplex system shows someone else arriving at 15.59 and 41
seconds – a fit-looking individual, wearing a blue denim jacket with a
fawn collar. He is on his mobile phone. This is Litvinenko at the
blurred edge of the picture; he calls Lugovoi from the hotel lobby to
tell him that he has arrived. The CCTV tells us little beyond this.
Apart from one important detail. Litvinenko never visits the hotel
bathroom. He is not the source of the polonium; it is his Russian
companions-turned-executioners who bring it with them to London, in
this, their second poisoning attempt.
* * *
The Soviet Union had a long tradition of bumping off
its enemies. They included Leon Trotsky (ice-pick in the head),
Ukrainian nationalists (poisons, exploding cakes) and the Bulgarian
dissident Georgi Markov (ricin pellet fired from an umbrella, on
London’s Waterloo Bridge). There was a spectrum. It went from killings
that were demonstrative, to those where the KGB’s fingerprints were
nowhere to be found, however hard you looked. Such murders were
justified by what you might call Leninist ethics: they were necessary to
defend the Bolshevik revolution, a noble experiment.
Litvinenko arrives at the Millennium hotel.
Under Boris Yeltsin these exotic killings mostly stopped. Moscow’s
secret poisons lab, set up by Lenin in 1917, was mothballed. After 2000
though, with Putin in the Kremlin, such Soviet-style operations quietly
resumed. Critics of Russia’s new president had an uncanny habit of
ending up ... well, dead. In power, Putin steered the country in an
increasingly authoritarian direction, snuffing out most sources of
opposition and dissent. The president’s fellow KGB comrades, once
subordinate to the Communist party, were now in sole charge.
The murders of journalists and human rights activists could not be
explained in terms of protecting socialism. Rather, the state was now
synonymous with something else: the personal financial interests of
Putin and his friends.
As an FSB officer in the 1990s, Litvinenko had been shocked to
discover how thoroughly organised crime had penetrated Russia’s security
organs. In his view, criminal ideology had replaced communist ideology.
He was the first to describe Putin’s Russia as a mafia state, in which
the roles of government, organised crime and the spy agencies had grown
indistinguishable.
While serving with the FSB, where his role was akin to that of a
detective, Litvinenko had also perfected his observation skills. It was
part of his basic training. How to describe the bad guys: their height,
build, hair colour and distinguishing features. What they were wearing.
Any jewellery. How old. Smoker or non-smoker. And of course their
conversation – from the major stuff, such as admissions of guilt, down
to trivial details. For example, who offered whom a cup of tea?
When DI Brent Hyatt of Scotland Yard later interviewed Litvinenko,
the Russian gave him a full and – in the circumstances, remarkable –
account of his meeting with Lugovoi and Kovtun in the Pine Bar.
Litvinenko said that Lugovoi approached him in the foyer from the left
side and said: “Let’s go, we are sitting there.” He followed Lugovoi
into the bar; Lugovoi had already ordered drinks. Lugovoi sat with his
back to the wall; Litvinenko was diagonally across from him on a chair.
There were glasses on the table – but no bottles. And “mugs and a
teapot”.
As Lugovoi knew, Litvinenko did not drink alcohol. Moreover he was
hard-up and reluctant to spend any money of his own in a fancy
establishment. The barman, Norberto Andrade, approached Litvinenko from
behind, and asked him: “Are you going to have anything?” Lugovoi
repeated the question and said: “Would you like anything?”. Litvinenko
said he did not want anything.
Litvinenko told Hyatt: “He [Lugovoi] said, ‘OK, well we’re going to
leave now anyway, so there is still some tea left here, if you want to
you can have some.’ And then the waiter went away, or I think Andrei
asked for a clean cup and he brought it. He left and when there was a
cup, I poured some tea out of the teapot, although there was only a
little left in the bottom and it made just half a cup. Maybe about 50
grammes.
“I swallowed several times but it was a green tea with no sugar and
it was already cold, by the way. I didn’t like it for some reason, well,
almost cold tea with no sugar, and I didn’t drink it any more. Maybe in
total I swallowed three or four times.” Litvinenko said he didn’t
finish the cup.
Hyatt: The pot with the tea in it was already there?
Litvinenko: Yes.
Hyatt: How many mugs were on the table when you came in?
Litvinenko: I think three or four cups.
Hyatt: And did Andrei drink any more from the pot in your presence?
Litvinenko: No.
Hyatt: OK, and what happened next?
Litvinenko: Then he said Vadim [Kovtun] is coming
here now ... either Vadim or Volodia, I can’t remember. I saw him for
the second time in my life.
Hyatt: What happened next?
Litvinenko: Next Volodia [Kovtun] took a place at the table on my side, across from Andrei.
The three men discussed their meeting scheduled for the following day
at the private security firm Global Risk. In previous months,
Litvinenko had tried to supplement his £2,000-a-month MI6
salary by doing due diligence reports for British firms keen to invest
in Russia. The bar was crowded, Litvinenko said. He felt a strong
antipathy towards Kovtun. It was only their second encounter. There was
something strange about him, Litvinenko thought – as if he were in the
midst of some personal torment.
Litvinenko: Volodia [Kovtun] was – seemed to be –
very depressed, as if he was very much hungover. He apologised. He said
that he hadn’t slept for the whole night, that he had just flown in from
Hamburg and he wanted to sleep very much and he couldn’t stand it any
more. But I think he is either an alcoholic or a drug addict. He is a
very unpleasant type.
Hyatt: Volodia, how did he know to come to the
table? Did Andrei contact him and ask him to come and join you, or was
there already an arrangement for him to join you?”
Litvinenko: No … he [Kovtun], I think he knew in advance. Even possibly they had been sitting before this and maybe he went up to his room.
Hyatt: Just going back to when you had some tea, you
didn’t ask the waiter for a drink. It was mentioned that there was some
tea left. How insistent was Andrei that you have a drink, or was he
indifferent? Was he saying, “Go on, go on, have some?” Or didn’t he
care?
Litvinenko: He said it like that, you know, “If you
would like something, order something for yourself, but we’re going to
be leaving soon. If, if you want some tea, then there is some left here,
you can have some of this...”
I could have ordered a drink myself, but he kind of presented in such
a way that it’s not really need to order. I don’t like when people pay
for me but in such an expensive hotel, forgive me, I don’t have enough
money to pay for that.”
Hyatt: Did you drink any of the tea in the presence of Volodia?
Litvinenko: No, I drank the tea only when Andrei was
sitting opposite me. In Volodia’s presence, I wasn’t drinking it .... I
didn’t like that tea.
Hyatt: And after you drank from that pot, did Andrei or Volodia drink anything from that pot?
Litvinenko: No, definitely. Later on, when I left
the hotel, I was thinking there was something strange. I had been
feeling all the time, I knew that they wanted to kill me.
There is no evidence to say whether it was Kovtun – an ex‑waiter, who
once worked in a Hamburg restaurant – or Lugovoi who put polonium in
the teapot. From Litvinenko’s testimony, it is clear that this was a
joint criminal enterprise. Lugovoi would subsequently explain that he
could not recall what drinks he had ordered in the Pine Bar. And that
Litvinenko had insisted upon their meeting, to which he had reluctantly
assented.
Subsequently, police tracked down Lugovoi’s bar bill. The order was:
three teas, three Gordon’s gin, three tonics, one champagne cocktail,
one Romeo y Julieta cigar No 1, one Gordon’s gin. The tea came to
£11.25; the total bill £70.60. Lugovoi was a man who murdered with a
certain breezy style.
By this point, Lugovoi and Kovtun must have concluded that their
poisoning operation had worked.
Litvinenko had drunk the green tea. Not
much, admittedly. But, he had drunk. Surely, enough? The meeting lasted
20 minutes. Lugovoi gazed at his watch. He said he was expecting his
wife. She appeared in the foyer and, as if on cue, waved her hand, and
mouthed: “Let’s go, let’s go.” Lugovoi got up to greet her, and left
Litvinenko and Kovtun sitting together at the table.
There was one final, scarcely believable scene. According to
Litvinenko, Lugovoi came back to the bar accompanied by his
eight-year-old son Igor. Lugovoi introduced him to Litvinenko. He said
to Igor: “This is Uncle Sasha, shake his hand.”
Igor was a good boy. He obediently shook Litvinenko’s hand, the same
hand that by now was pulsing with radiation. When police examined
Litvinenko’s jacket they found massive contamination on the sleeve –
Litvinenko had picked up and drunk the tea with his right hand. The
party, plus Litvinenko, left the bar. The Lugovoi family and Sokolenko
went off to the match. Kovtun declined to go, declaring: “I’m very
tired, I want to sleep.”
Forensic experts would test the entire bar area, the tables, and
crockery. They examined 100 teapots, as well as cups, spoons, saucers,
milk jugs. Litvinenko’s white ceramic teapot was not difficult to
discover – it gave off readings of 100,000 becquerels per centimetre
squared. The biggest reading came from the spout. (The teapot was put in
the dishwasher afterwards and unknowingly reused for subsequent
customers.) The table where they sat registered 20,000 becquerels. Half
that, ingested, was enough to kill a person.
Lugovoi and Kovtun at a press conference in Moscow, in 2006
Polonium was a miasma, a creeping fog. It was found inside the
dishwasher, on the floor, till, a coffee strainer handle. There were
traces on bottles of Martini and Tia Maria behind the bar, the ice-cream
scoop, a chopping board. It turned up on chairs – with large alpha
radiation readings from where the three Russians sat – and the piano
stool. Whoever sent Lugovoi and Kovtun to London must have known of the
risks to others. Apparently they didn’t care.
The most crucial piece of evidence was discovered several floors
above the Pine Bar, in Kovtun’s room, 382. When police forensic teams
took apart the bathroom sink they found a mangled clump of debris. The
debris was stuck in the sediment trap of the sink’s waste pipe. Tests on
the clump showed it contained 390,000 becquerels of polonium. The
levels were so high that they could only have come from polonium itself.
After laying the poison in Litvinenko’s teapot, Kovtun had gone back
upstairs to his room. There, in the privacy of the bathroom, he had
tipped the rest of the liquid solution down the sink. No one else –
other than Lugovoi and Sokolenko – had access to the room. Police
concluded that Kovtun had knowingly handled the murder weapon, and
afterwards got rid of it. It was an intentional act of disposal.
The science was objective, conclusive and utterly damning. It had the
simplicity of undeniable fact. Back in Moscow, in numerous subsequent
interviews, Kovtun would claim innocence. He was never able to explain
away this piece of evidence: why was the polonium in his bathroom?
The Russian operation to murder Litvinenko would have had a codename
-– thus far unknown. It could finally be marked down as a success. It
was the sixth anniversary of Litvinenko’s arrival in Britain: 1 November
2000. He did not know it yet, but he was dying. The substance used to
kill him had been chosen because the killers believed it could not be
detected. The plan was working. From this point on nothing – not even
the most gifted medical team from the heavens – could save him.
* * *
Seventeen days later, Litvinenko was lying in
hospital, mortally ill. His case had baffled medical staff. Eventually,
they had alighted on a diagnosis of thallium poisoning. This late stage
saw the arrival of Scotland Yard.
To begin with, the British police had a confusing picture – a
poisoned Russian who spoke poor English; a baffling plot involving
visitors from Moscow; and a swirl of potential crime scenes. Two
detectives, DI Brent Hyatt and DS Chris Hoar, from the Met’s specialist
crime unit, interviewed Litvinenko in the critical care unit on the 16th
floor of University College Hospital.He had been admitted as Edwin Redwald Carter, his British pseudonym.He
is a “significant witness” in the investigation. There are 18
interviews, lasting eight hours and 57 minutes in total. These
conversations stretch out over three days, from the early hours of 18
November until shortly before 9pm on 20 November.
The interview transcripts were kept secret for eight-and-a-half
years, hidden in Scotland Yard’s case file, and stamped with the word
“Restricted”. Revealed in 2015, they are remarkable documents. They are,
in effect, unique witness statements taken from a ghost. But Litvinenko
is no ordinary ghost: he is a ghost who uses his final reserves of
energy to solve a chilling murder mystery – his own.
Litvinenko was a highly experienced detective. He knew how
investigations worked. He was fastidious too: neatly collating case
materials in a file, always employing a hole‑punch. In the interviews,
he sets out before the police in dispassionate terms the evidence of who
might have poisoned him. He acknowledges: “I cannot blame these people
directly because I have no proof.”
He is an ideal witness – good with descriptions, heights, details. He
draws up a list of suspects. There are three of them: the Italian Mario
Scaramella; his business partner Andrei Lugovoi, and Lugovoi’s
unpleasant Russian companion, whose name Litvinenko struggles to
remember, and to whom he refers wrongly as “Volodia” or “Vadim”.
Hyatt begins recording at eight minutes after midnight on 18
November. He introduces himself and his colleague DS Hoar. Litvinenko
gives his own name and address.
Hoar then says: “Thank you very much for that, Edwin. Edwin, we’re
here investigating an allegation that somebody has poisoned you in an
attempt to kill you.” Hoar says that doctors have told him Edwin is
suffering from “extremely high levels of thallium” and “that is the
cause of this illness”.
He continues: “Can I ask you to tell us what you think has happened to you and why?”
Medical staff had pre-briefed Hoar that Litvinenko spoke good
English. Hoar discovered that was not true. After this first
conversation, an interpreter was brought in.
Litvinenko is still able to give a full account of his career in the
FSB, his deepening conflict with the agency.
He also talks of his “good
relationship” with the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya,
another Putin enemy, and her fear that she was in danger. In spring
2006, they met in a branch of Cafe Nero in London.
Litvinenko asked her
what was wrong. She told him: “Alexander, I’m very afraid,” and said
that every time she said goodbye to her daughter and son she had the
feeling she was looking at them “for the last time”. He urged her to
leave Russia. She said she could not – her parents were old, she had
kids. In October 2006, Politkovskaya was shot dead in the stairwell of
her Moscow apartment.
Politkovskaya’s murder left Litvinenko “very, very shocked”, he says,
adding: “I lost of a lot of my friends”, and that human life in Russia
is cheap He tells detectives about his speech in the Frontline Club, a
press club in London, the previous month, in which he accused Putin
publicly of having Politkovskaya killed.
From time to time, the interviews stop: the tape runs out; nurses
come in to administer drugs; Litvinenko, suffering from diarrhoea, has
to go to the bathroom. Mostly, though, he battles on. He tells Hyatt:
“Meeting you is very important for my case.”
It is the two Russians who are at the centre of his suspicions.
Litvinenko recounts his meeting with them at the Millennium. He says
that he had not been to the hotel before and that he had to find it on a
map. He insists this “special” information remain secret – not to be
made public or shared with his wife Marina.
“These people, it’s
interesting. Most interesting,” he muses.
With time running out, Litvinenko is working furiously to solve the conundrum. The transcript reads:
Carter [Litvinenko]: Only these three people can poison me.
Hyatt: These three.
Carter: Mario, Vadim [Kovtun] and Andrei.
There are moments when it appears that there are three officers hard
at work: Hyatt, Hoar and Litvinenko, the punctilious ex-cop. After four
or five hours of interviews, the case begins to cohere. The
investigation gains new momentum. Information is passed back to SO15,
the counter-terrorist command at Scotland Yard, headed by Det Supt Clive
Timmons.
Litvinenko explains that his most important papers are kept at home,
in the lower shelf of a large cupboard.
The papers include critical
information on Putin, and the people around him, from newspapers and
other sources, as well as background on Russian criminal gangs. He gives
the police his email password and bank account. He tells them where
they can find receipts for two Orange sim cards, bought for £20 from a
store in Bond Street – in a black leather wallet on his bedside table.
Litvinenko explains that he gave one of the sims to Lugovoi; they used
these secret numbers to communicate. He hands over his diary.
Ever helpful, Litvinenko phones his wife and asks her to locate a
photo of Lugovoi at their home. Hyatt suspends the interview to secure
the photograph. Lugovoi is now a prime suspect. Litvinenko describes him
like this: “Andrei is a pure European, and even he looks a little bit
like me, sort of. The same type as like me ... I am 1m 77cm – 1m 78cm,
so he is probably 1m 76cm. He is two years younger than me, light hair.”
He has a small, “almost invisible” bald patch.
The transcript reads:
Hyatt: Edwin, do you consider Andrei to be a friend
of yours, or a business associate? What, how do you describe your
relationship with Andrei?
Carter: ... He is not a friend. He is a business partner.
At the end of his second day of interviews, on 19 November,
Litvinenko describes getting a lift home with a Chechen friend named
Akhmed Zakayev: “Now the paradoxical thing is that I was still feeling
very well but then somehow I had some kind of feeling that something
might happen to me in the nearest future. Maybe subconsciously.” The
detectives turn off the tape. It is a full and frank account of events
leading up to Litvinenko’s poisoning – with one exception. During these
two days he does not mention his secret life and his job working for
British intelligence. It is only the next day that he speaks of his
meeting on 31 October with his MI6 handler “Martin”, in the basement
cafe of the Waterstone’s bookshop on Piccadilly. Litvinenko is chary –
evidently reluctant to discuss his undercover role.
Carter: On 31 October at about 4pm, I had a meeting
arranged with a person about whom I wouldn’t really like to talk here
because I have some commitments. You can contact that person on that
long telephone number which I gave you.
Hyatt: Did you meet with that person, Edwin?
Carter: Yes.
Hyatt: Edwin, it could be absolutely vital that you tell us who that person is.
Carter: You can call him and he will tell you.
The interview abruptly stops. It’s 5.16pm. Hyatt dials the long
telephone number, reaches “Martin”, and tells him that Litvinenko is
gravely ill in hospital, the victim of an apparent poisoning by two
mysterious Russians.
Police investigate Litvinenko’s poisoning at the Millennium hotel in central London.
It appears to be the first time that MI6 – an organisation famed for its
professionalism – learns of Litvinenko’s plight. Litvinenko, of course,
was not a full-time employee. But he was a salaried informant, with his
own encrypted mobile phone and MI6-provided passport. The agency
appears not to have classified Litvinenko as being at risk, despite
numerous threatening phone calls from Moscow and a firebomb attack on
his north London home in 2004.
MI6’s reaction is unclear. The British government has still refused
to release the relevant files. One can imagine panic and embarrassment.
And the agency shifting into full-blown crisis mode. The transcripts
show that after speaking to DI Hyatt, “Martin” scrambled to Litvinenko’s
hospital bedside. He talked to his poisoned agent, and left around
7.15pm. The police interview then resumes; the final exchanges deal with
earlier threats against Litvinenko from the Kremlin and its emissaries.
The detectives ask if there is anything Litvinenko would like to add:
Hoar: Can you think of anybody else who may wish to do this sort of harm to you?
Carter: I have no doubt who wanted it, and I often
receive threats from these people. This was done … I have no doubt
whatsoever that this was done by the Russian Secret Services. Having
knowledge of the system I know that the order about such a killing of a
citizen of another country on its territory, especially if it is
something to do with Great Britain, could have been given by only one
person.
Hyatt: Would you like to tell us who that person is, sir? Edwin?
Carter: That person is the president of the Russian
Federation, Vladimir Putin. And if ... you of course know, while he’s
still president, you won’t be able to prosecute him as the main person
who gave that order, because he is the president of a huge country
crammed with nuclear, chemical and bacteriological weapons. But I have
no doubt whatsoever that as soon as the power changes in Russia or when
the first officer of Russian Special Services defects to the west he
will say the same. He will say that I have been poisoned by the Russian
Special Services on Putin’s order.
* * *
Litvinenko’s condition was rapidly deteriorating. On
20 November, the same day as his last police interview, doctors moved
him to intensive care. There it was easier to monitor him and, if
necessary, to intervene. Litvinenko’s heart rate was becoming abnormal;
his major organs failing.
The medics treating him were in uncharted territory. Litvinenko’s
case was problematic: his symptoms were not consistent with thallium
poisoning. He had severe bone marrow failure and gut damage, which
fitted. But he lacked one key symptom of thallium poisoning – peripheral
neuropathy, pain or numbness in his fingers and feet. “It was still a
bit of a mystery,” one doctor said.
Meanwhile, those close to Litvinenko were reluctantly concluding that he was unlikely to survive.
The Kremlin would subsequently accuse Litvinenko’s friend Alex
Goldfarb, and Boris Berezovsky of cynically exploiting him, as part of
their long-running public relations campaign against Putin. In fact,
Litvinenko made it abundantly clear – as the Scotland Yard transcripts
show – that he held Putin personally responsible for his poisoning. And
he wanted to send this message to the world.
Litvinenko’s lawyer, George Menzies, began drafting a statement on
his behalf. Menzies later said that the ideas in it were wholly
Litvinenko’s. “I was doing my best, in personal terms, to represent what
I truly believed to be Sasha’s state of mind and sentiment,” he said.
Its themes – Litvinenko’s pride in being British, his love of his wife,
his belief as to the source of his illness – mirrored what his client
thought, Menzies said.
Goldfarb and Menzies took the draft to the hospital. They showed it
to Marina. Her reaction was negative. She believed her husband would
pull through and that writing a last testament was tantamount to giving
up on him. Pragmatically, they told her: “Better to do it now than
later.”
Menzies consulted with Tim Bell, chairman of the London PR firm Bell
Pottinger. Bell’s company had worked for Berezovsky since 2002, helping
the exiled oligarch through various legal scrapes, and had assisted the
Litvinenkos as well. Bell said he thought the text was too gloomy and
read like a “deathbed statement.” “I didn’t think it was the right thing
to do because I still hoped and believed Sasha would live,” Bell said.
Goldfarb read out the A4 sheet to Litvinenko in intensive care,
translating it from English to Russian. At one point Goldfarb made a
movement with his arms, mimicking the flight of an angel flapping its
wings. Litvinenko endorsed the statement in its entirety, confirming:
“This is exactly what I want to say.” Litvinenko then signed and dated
it – 21 November 2006, his signature trailing off into a black swirl.
The statement accused Litvinenko’s one-time FSB boss of murder, and
ended: “You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest
from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the
rest of your life.”
TV cameras and media had gathered outside the hospital’s main gate, waiting for news.
Sixteen floors above them, Litvinenko asked Goldfarb if he was a big
story. He was – but not much was known about Litvinenko, other than that
he was a prominent critic of Putin’s, and desperately ill. Goldfarb
said: “Sasha, if you really want the message to be seriously put across,
we need a photo.” Marina was against the idea, and saw it as an
invasion of privacy. But Litvinenko agreed, and said: “Yes, if you think
it’s needed, let’s do it.”
Goldfarb rang Bell Pottinger and spoke to Jennifer Morgan, Bell’s
liaison. Morgan in turn called a photographer she knew, Natasja Weitsz.
Weitsz arrived at the hospital and was escorted upstairs past a police
guard. She was with Litvinenko for mere minutes. He pushed his green
hospital gown to one side so as to reveal the electro-cardiagram sensors
attached to his heart. Weitsz shot a couple of frames of Litvinenko:
bald, gaunt and defiant, staring with cornflower-blue eyes directly at
the camera lens. The image was cropped around its haunting subject. It
went round the world.
By the next day, Wednesday 22 November, doctors treating Litvinenko
had scrapped their diagnosis. Their notes read: “We DO NOT feel this
gentleman has or had inorganic thallium poisoning.”
At midday, a top-level meeting was convened at the Met’s counter-terrorism command. It involved SO15 detectives,ledby
Det Supt Timmons, medical staff, a scientist from the UK’s atomic
weapons establishment, the forensic science service and Dr Nick Gent
from Porton Down, the UK’s military science facility. The latest urine
test had revealed the presence of a new radioactive isotope –
polonium-210. But this was marked down as an anomaly, caused by the
plastic container used to carry the sample.
According to Timmons, the specialists discussed five theories that
might explain Litvinenko’s baffling poisoning. Most were esoteric. The
experts decided to investigate further and to send a litre of urine to
Aldermaston.
Back in the intensive care ward, Litvinenko was drifting in and out
of consciousness. The Russian-German film-maker Andrei Nekrasov visited
him. Nekrasov had previously conducted several interviews with
Litvinenko; he shot the video on condition that it would be released
only with Marina’s approval. Litvinenko lies on his bed, a vanquished
soul, around whom the world is darkening. A drip is attached to his
nose; his cheeks are hollow; his eyes are open – just. There is pale
afternoon light.
Marina Litvinenko in 2012
“He was conscious, but was very, very weak,” Marina said. “I spent
almost all day sitting close to him, [to] make him just be calm and more
relaxed.” At 8pm Marina got up to leave, and told her husband: “Sasha,
unfortunately I have to go.”
She said: “He smiled so sadly, and I started to feel I’m guilty
because I’m leaving him, and I just said: ‘Don’t worry, tomorrow morning
I will come and everything will be fine.’”
Litvinenko whispered back to her: “I love you so much.”
At midnight the hospital called to say that Litvinenko had gone into
cardiac arrest, not once but twice. The medics managed to resuscitate
him. Marina returned to University College Hospital, getting a lift with
Zakayev, and found her husband unconscious and on a life-support
machine. She spent the following day, 23 November, at his side;
Litvinenko was in an induced coma. That evening she went back to Muswell
Hill. An hour after arriving home the phone rang. It was the hospital
telling her urgently to return.
Litvinenko suffered a third cardiac arrest at 8.51pm. The consultant
on duty, Dr James Down, tried to revive him but at 9.21pm pronounced him
dead. When Marina and Anatoly arrived at the hospital they were taken
not to the ward but to a side room. Ten or 15 minutes later, the doctor
told them that Litvinenko had died.
He added: “Would you like to see
Sasha?” to which Marina replied: “Of course.”
For the first time in several days, Marina was allowed to touch and
kiss her husband; Anatoly ran from the room after half a minute.
Six hours before Litvinenko’s death, at about 3pm, Timmons received a
phone call from the atomic weapons establishment. It had the results
from the latest tests. They confirmed that Litvinenko was “terribly
contaminated”, as Timmons put it, with radioactive polonium.
German intelligence, possibly with the
collaboration of the United States, monitored communications lines
connecting Finland with at least five countries in the early 2000s, according to leaked documents. The documents, aired this week by Yle Uutiset,
the main news program of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle), is
based on information contained in “leaked German intelligence documents”
that were first made public in May 2015. As intelNewsreported
at the time, the intelligence collection was described as a secret
collaboration between Germany’s BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) and
America’s National Security Agency (NSA). According to Austrian
politician Peter Pilz, who made the initial allegations, the BND-NSA
collaboration was codenamed EIKONAL and was active from 2005 to 2008.
Pilz said at the time that many European phone carriers and Internet
service providers were targeted by the two agencies. Belgium and Switzerland have already launched investigations into EIKONAL.
Now new information provided by Yle seems
to show that the secret BND-NSA collaboration targeted Finnish
communications as well, focusing on at least six separate communications
transit lines. The lines are believed to carry telephone call and
possibly Internet traffic from Finnish capital Helsinki to a number of
cities in France, Belgium, Hungary, Luxemburg, and China, said Yle Uutiset.
Although the targeted lines are known to carry telephone and Internet
traffic, it is unknown at this time whether EIKONAL targeted both kinds.
But Yle said the interception lasted for most of the first part of the
2000s and involved large amounts of communications data.
The station contacted Tuomas
Portaankorva, Inspector General of SUPO, the Finnish Security
Intelligence Service. He told Yle that, speaking broadly, he was not
surprised to be told that Finnish telecommunications lines had been
monitored by foreign intelligence agencies, Western or otherwise. He
went on to caution that, even though Finnish lines had been targeted, it
was not possible to conclude that Finland was indeed the target of the
surveillance operation. Yle also spoke to Vesa Häkkinen, spokesman for
the from Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who told the station
that SUPO, and not the ministry, was the proper official body to be
consulted about EIKONAL. “If there is reason to suspect that these
actions were directed at the Finnish state”, said Häkkinen, “we would
undertake appropriate action”.
Sitting in the shabby parlour of his temporary home, Haaji Mohammed can barely bring himself to watch the Isil video playing on his mobile phone. The film was made just last month – yet the horrific scenes it shows could be from 500 years ago.
Kneeling before a masked executioner are two men in orange jumpsuits, charged under a statute that drags even the medieval barbarity of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to new depths. The pair are accused of “sorcery”, and just as in witchcraft trials of old, justice is swift, brutal and dispensed to the sound of a baying mob.
As the executioner beheads them with a four-foot scimitar, a crowd of men and boys scream “Allahu Akhbar”, jostling each other for a closer look.
Haaji Mohammed, whose son was killed while fighting ISIS in Sirte pictured outside his new home in Misrata Photo: Will Wintercross/The Telegraph
Mr Mohammed is less keen. “I know that man personally,” he says, pointing to the older of the two defendants, whom he names as Said Jabr. “He is not a witch, he is just an alternative healer who does homeopathy and acupuncture. He was wrongly accused.”
That Isil’s self-appointed morality police can be as careless as they are callous will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen their countless execution videos from Iraq and Syria.
Yet this latest broadcast was shot not in the Isil strongholds of Raqqa or Mosul but the terror group’s new “caliphate” in Libya, where it now controls Colonel Gaddafi’s home city of Sirte, just 350 miles south of Italy.
Stuffed with civic vanity buildings erected in Gaddafi’s honour, Sirte’s grandiose skyline was all but flattened in the 2011 revolution, when rebel groups from nearby Misrata vowed to teach the tyrant’s stronghold a lesson. Now the tables have been turned, as the city’s humiliated Gaddafi remnants join forces with Isil in revenge.
Mr Mohammed, a Sirte elder, was forced to flee six months ago. Along with some 5,000 other Sirte residents, he now lives in the nearby city of Misrata. Yet as the fate of Mr Jabr shows, anything is better than staying put.
Formed by a vanguard of just a few dozen fighters a year ago, Isil’s Sirte chapter is now believed to be up to 3,000-strong, imposing a regime of beheadings and crucifixions. Military hardware left over from when the people of Misrata fought the government Photo: Will Wintercross/The Telegraph
As with the ex-Ba’athists who now back Isil, it matters not a jot to the Gaddafi loyalists that their own secular brand of thuggery has little common cause with Isil’s religious version.
“There is a saying these days in Sirte: 'Better to live in the hellfire of Isil than the heaven of Misrata’,” said Jamal al Misteri, 30, a Misratan rebel fighter. Men gather in Misrata for a demo Photo: Will Wintercross/The Telegraph
Such is the fear of that “hellfire” consuming the whole country that Britain has offered 1,000 troops to a 5,000-strong Italian force to help Libya’s fledgling security forces take Isil on, though they would be confined to training roles. However, while few would doubt the ex-Libyan rebels’ combat prowess, there are no “government” forces for Western troops to mentor.
"Fighting Gaddafi’s people during the war was hard enough, but these Isil people are even fiercer"
Instead, for two years, the country has been in a low-level civil war between two rival administrations, whose main achievement has been to distract each other enough for Isil to get a hold.
Following a landmark peace deal signed last month after exhaustive UN-backed talks, the two factions are attempting to form a unity government. Diplomats fear, though, that even the mortal threat of Isil may not be enough to make them pull together: when the country’s new UN-backed prime minister, Faiz Serraj, visited the scene of an Isil truck bombing two weeks ago, some locals booed him.
Meanwhile, the chaos and discontent that Isil has exploited so deftly in Sirte remains across the country. Western embassies have withdrawn from Tripoli because of fears of kidnappings and terrorist attack.
Many of the city’s young ex-revolutionaries are now struck with a sense of despair, wondering why their reward for toppling one of the world’s most feared dictators is merely to face another psychopathic force in the form of Isil.
“Blood has become like smoke,” said “Ahmed”, 23, puffing on a joint and slugging from a bottle of Chivas Regal one night. “I used to be upset when I saw people killed, now it means nothing.”
Misrata is relatively unified by Libyan standards, its people having been through a collective baptism of fire in 2011 when Gaddafi’s forces subjected them to a savage six-month siege. But after emerging from that coastal Stalingrad with a reputation for having some of the best urban fighters in Libya, it appears to have met its match in Isil-controlled Sirte. An Isil flag painted on the front of the Ougadougou conference centre in Sirte, Libya Photo: Sam Tarling/The Telegraph
After initial successes, a senior military figure says, the fighting went into areas where the risk of civilian casualties was too high. Other Misratan fighters, though, say they were simply outgunned. “Fighting Gaddafi’s people during the war was hard enough, but these Isil people are even fiercer,” said Mr Mohammed’s nephew Osama, who at one point was burying five comrades a day, including one of Mr Mohammed’s sons. “We have never seen anything like it.”
Misratan commanders say a major offensive is being planned against Isil in Sirte, and that Western help will be welcome, as long as it is discreet.
Meanwhile, Osama and his surviving comrades are laying the groundwork by sending spies into Sirte to gather intelligence. Two have already been caught and killed, and three others are missing, but the risks are deemed worth it – if only to see the return of Libya’s green, black and red revolutionary flag, which still flutters proudly all over the rest of the country. A shop functions as normal in a building badly damaged from when the people of Misrata fought the government Photo: Will Wintercross/The Telegraph
“Isil’s people only want their own black flag on display,” said Osama. “So they have set up special dustbins where the Libyan flag can be dumped.”
In a country where so many died to see it unfurled five years ago, there is perhaps no greater insult – and no greater expression of Isil’s new confidence.
Four worshippers were killed in a suicide bombing at a mosque in
northern Cameroon on Monday, a security source said, five days after a
similar attack left 12 people dead.
The blast hit the village
of Nguetchewe in Cameroon's Far North region, in an area near the border
with Nigeria regularly targeted by Boko Haram jihadists.
"The toll of this attack is four dead and two injured," the source, who was at the scene of the attack, told AFP.
A source close to regional authorities confirmed that a deadly attack
had taken place in Nguetchewe, but was unable to provide details.
The security source said the attack took place around 6:00 am local time just as morning prayers were ending.
"The suicide bomber, a young boy, arrived in the village by foot," the
source said, adding that a witness had noticed his behaviour seemed
suspicious and had tried to intercept him.
"The bomber ran towards the mosque, where he set off the explosives he was carrying with him."
Cameroonian troops are at the scene of the attack, the source said.
It is the second deadly blast to hit the Far North in less than a week,
following a bombing at a mosque in Kolofata district during morning
prayers last Wednesday.
Russian GRU military units are on the
move, according to the New Region media center. It’s source, Nikolai
Zhigalin, has previously drawn attention by reporting on the “foul of
Togliatti”. Specifically, he revealed that currently there is a
discussion about disbanding the military unit in which two Russian
military men currently imprisoned in Ukraine, Captain Yerofeyev and
Sergeant Alexandrov, served before they were taken prisoner.
Some important documents from
Togliatti GRU that recently fell into Zhigalin’s hands seem to confirm
his latest allegations. Among the documents is an itinerary, which
reflects the movement of 15 privates and four sergeants, and the
instructions on their movement. The starting and final points of the
route are not indicated, although Nikolai claims that regulations
require that they are stated in the itinerary.
“The number of the GRU company,
08 332, indicates that this company is not located in Togliatti.
However, I received the documents from Togliatti, therefore, they moved
through the city. Well, where they can go? Their usual food supply is
for 5 days. So, it is a straight road to Donbas with a stop in
Togliatti,” said Nikolai in an exclusive interview with New Region.
New Region, for its part, would appreciate any information on the movement of Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine.
North Korea has scattered nearly one million propaganda leaflets in South Korea over the past week, Seoul said Monday, in an escalating propaganda battle triggered by Pyongyang's latest nuclear test.
The leaflets, floated across the border by helium balloons, are an apparent response to South Korea's decision to blast a mix of K-pop and propaganda messages into North Korea using giant banks of speakers on the heavily militarised border.
North Korea has retaliated with its own loudspeaker broadcasts along with the leaflets attacking South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
The tit-for-tat exchanges are the result of the North's fourth nuclear test carried out -- to near universal condemnation -- on January 6.
The defence ministry said the North’s leaflets were being air-dropped on a near daily basis and estimated the number that had been scattered at close to one million.
Most have been recovered near the border in Gyeonggi province, though some have made it as far as Seoul.
A ministry official told AFP that the North was using helium balloons with timers that cause them to explode and scatter the leaflet packages.
It can be a blunt propaganda tool. Last week an unopened package of nearly 10,000 leaflets slammed into a car, imploding the roof.
Yang Moo-Jin, a professor at the Seoul-based University for North Korean Studies, said the leafleting was largely a reactive gesture.
"They couldn't just sit idle while South Korea launches a psychological warfare front," Yang said.
As well as the loudspeakers, Seoul is considering installing giant electronic signboards on the border to display messages and videos.
South Korea halted official leaflet drops following an inter-Korean agreement reached in 2004, but civic groups have kept up balloon launches into the North for years -- much to Pyongyang's annoyance.
GAZIANTEP, Turkey (AP) — Mohammed Saad, a Syrian activist, was imprisoned by the Islamic State group, hung by his arms and beaten regularly. Then one day, his jailors quickly pulled him and other prisoners down and hid them in a bathroom.
The reason? A senior Muslim cleric was visiting to inspect the facility. The cleric had told the fighters running the prison that they shouldn't torture prisoners and that anyone held without charge must be released within 30 days, Saad told The Associated Press. Once the coast was clear, the prisoners were returned to their torment.
"It's a criminal gang pretending to be a state," Saad said, speaking in Turkey, where he fled in October. "All this talk about applying Shariah and Islamic values is just propaganda, Daesh is about torture and killing," he said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
Syrians who have recently escaped the Islamic State group's rule say public disillusionment is growing as IS has failed to live up to its promises to install a utopian "Islamic" rule of justice, equality and good governance.
Instead, the group has come to resemble the dictatorial rule of Syrian President Bashar Assad that many Syrians had sought to shed, with a reliance on informers who have silenced a fearful populace. Rather than equality, society has seen the rise of a new elite class — the jihadi fighters — who enjoy special perks and favor in the courts, looking down on "the commoners" and even ignoring the rulings of their own clerics.
Despite the atrocities that made it notorious, the Islamic State group had raised hopes among some fellow Sunnis when it overran their territories across parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a "caliphate" in the summer of 2014. It presented itself as a contrast to Assad's rule, bringing justice through its extreme interpretation of Shariah and providing services to residents, including loans to farmers, water and electricity, and alms to the poor. Its propaganda machine promoting the dream of an Islamic caliphate helped attract jihadis from around the world.
FILE - In this June 16, 2014 file photo, demonstrators chant pro-Islamic State group slogans as they …
In Istanbul and several Turkish cities near the Syrian border, the AP spoke to more than a dozen Syrians who fled IS-controlled territory in recent months. Most spoke on condition they be identified only by their first names or by the nicknames they use in their political activism for fear of IS reprisals against themselves or family.
"Daesh justice has been erratic," said Nayef, who hails from IS-held eastern Syrian town of al-Shadadi and escaped to Turkey in November with his family, largely because of Russian airstrikes. "They started off good and then, gradually, things got worse." He insisted that his last name not be printed, fearing for his safety.
The group has recruited informers in the towns and cities it controls to watch out for any sign of opposition.
"Like under the (Assad) regime, we were also afraid to talk against Daesh to anyone we don't fully trust," said Fatimah, a 33-year-old whose hometown of Palmyra was taken over by IS early last year. She fled to Turkey in November with her husband and five children to escape Russian and Syrian airstrikes.
IS has also become less able to provide public services, in large part because military reversals appear to have put strains on its finances. U.S. and Russian airstrikes have heavily hit its oil infrastructure — a major source of funds. Over the past year, the group has lost 30 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, according to the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition. Many of those interviewed by the AP said there are lengthier cutoffs of water and electricity in their towns and cities and prices for oil and gas have risen.
In this Dec. 4, 2015, photo, an activist from Deir al-Zour, Syria, who goes by the name Mohammed Saa …
Abu Salem, an activist from the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, said public acceptance of IS rule is eroding. "It has made an enemy of almost everyone," he told the AP in the Turkish city of Reyhanli on the Syrian border.
One sign of the distance between the claims and realities is a 12-page manifesto by IS detailing its judicial system. The document, a copy of which was obtained by the AP, heavily emphasizes justice and tolerance. For example, it sets out the duties of the Hisba, the "religious police" who ensure people adhere to the group's dress codes, strict separation of genders and other rules.
A Hisba member "must be gentle and pleasant toward those he orders or reprimands," it says. "He must be flexible and good mannered so that his influence is greater and the response (he gets) is stronger."
Yet, the escaped Syrians all complained of the brutal extremes that the Hisba resorts to. One woman who lived in Raqqa said that if a woman is considered to have violated the dress codes, the militants flog her husband, since he is seen as responsible for her. When her neighbor put out the garbage without being properly covered, she said, the woman's husband was whipped.
Abu Manaf, a 44-year-old from Deir el-Zour, said some clerics challenged the group's enforcers over their wanton use of strict Shariah punishments like beheadings, stoning to death, flogging and cutting off limbs. More moderate clerics in IS argued that such punishments can only be implemented under specific conditions. They also complained about the jihadis' custom of displaying bodies of the beheaded in public as an example to others, violating Islamic tenets requiring the swift burial of the dead.
FILE - In this Nov. 24, 2014, file photo, Iraqi army soldiers deploy in front of a court run by the …
"Many of those moderate clerics disappear, are killed or jailed for crimes they did not commit," said Abu Manaf, who left Deir el-Zour in November, then stayed In the Islamic State group's de facto capital, Raqqa, for three weeks before he reached Turkey.
Saad's account of his imprisonment in his home city of Deir el-Zour reflected the tensions between the fighters and some clerics.
He was arrested because of his media activism, reporting on the anti-Assad opposition. IS suspected him of belonging to the rebel Free Syrian Army, which is fighting the extremists. The day the cleric came to inspect the prison — set up in a former police station — he heard the cleric asking the guards if the prisoners were getting enough food and water, and whether they were being beaten, Saad said.
On another occasion, a cleric and a judge visited and spoke to the prisoners in their cells. Saad said they told him to write on a piece of paper his name, why he'd been jailed and whether he had been tortured or made to confess under duress. He wrote that he had not been beaten, because he knew the guards would punish him if he said he had been, Saad said.
After five months in custody, Saad said he secured his release by agreeing to do media work for IS. For three months, he helped put together videos and other propaganda before escaping to Turkey.
In this Dec. 3, 2015, photo, Hossam, a native of Aleppo, Syria, speaks to The Associated Press durin …
The Syrians interviewed in Turkey said that in IS courts the judges often show a bias toward IS operatives in any legal dispute with the general public. Judges justify the bias by pointing to Quranic verses or sayings of the prophet Muhammad, including "God prefers those who fight in jihad over those who sit." Often, IS members refer to the general population by the dismissive term "al-awam," Arabic for "the commoners."
Hossam, who owned a women's clothes shop in Raqqa, said IS members receive perks that sharply set them apart from everyone else. In many cases, young men join the group to escape poverty or protect themselves from IS excesses, he and others said. He insisted that his last name not be printed, fearing for his safety.
"Those who join Daesh receive a step up in the social ladder," he told the AP in Istanbul. "Daesh men drive luxury cars and eat at the best restaurants and whoever has a friend or a relative with Daesh has a better life."
One perk that IS members avail themselves of is the chance to marry local women. Several of the Syrians interviewed by the AP said families with daughters often came under pressure to marry them off to fighters, which has led many to smuggle daughters to Turkey.
Khatar, a 26-year-old who spoke in Lesbos, Greece, making her way to Western Europe, said she has two younger sisters back in Raqqa, and jihadis "have been knocking on our doors at least once a month to ask for their hands in marriage." Her father lies to them and tells them he doesn't have unmarried daughters, "but they keep coming back."
But some take the opportunity to marry an IS member because the benefits lift the whole family out of the "al-awam" class.
Khatar said a 17-year-old daughter of one of her neighbors married a Saudi jihadi. When Khatar went to congratulate her, she found her loaded with expensive clothes and jewelry as a dowry. "She seemed very happy with her new, elevated social status," Khatar said.
