Eye Spy - May 2018

EYE SPY INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE 115 2018 41

The laboratories and chemical facilities of international scientific institutions and other secret facilities that remain

unidentified, have long been a source of ‘weaponry’ sought by the underworld and those engaged in deeply

disturbing acts. Unlike the tools of ‘conventional’ assassins (firearms, bladed weaponry, neck chokes, poisons

etc.), numerous others have been developed which are invisible and are often ‘delivered’ in unconventional ways,

making detection even more difficult. Besides their menace, they also have a deeply psychological edge

POISON DEDUCTION

The Assassins Playground

mpossible to purchase through normal
channels and in time, virtually impossible
to detect. Polonium-210 can only be
Iproduced by nuclear powers in sufficient
quantities that could kill. Safe to transport if
properly secured, scientists acknowledge that
its radioactivity is not enough even to
penetrate an envelope, for example. However,
once ingested or inhaled, internal damage
begins immediately and the victim will die in
days, or weeks. Former FSB officer and MI6
agent Alexander Litvinenko was killed by
Polonium-210 in London, 2006, after it was
slipped into his tea. British forensic investiga-
tors initially had difficulty in detecting

Yasser Arafat

Alexander

Litvinenko

V

scientists engaged in a programme to

research pesticides at the laboratory of British

Imperial Chemical Industries. Less than half-a-

milligram is needed to kill an adult. Variants

exist. At the height of the Cold War both

Russia and the United States produced VX.

Banned in 1997 under the Chemical Weapons

Convention, VX was used recently in February

2017, to assassinate Kim Jong-nam, the half

brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

For the record, NK is not a signatory to the UN

CW Convention.

The highest number of VX fatalities occurred

in 1988, when Saddam Hussein used the

agent to kill around 5,000 Kurds in nor thern

Iraq.

Sarin, another nerve agent, has also been

used as a terror weapon and assassins tool.

In 1995, Japanese cult Shako Asahara killed

13 people in a Tokyo subway attack.

Kim Jong-nam

• dead in 20
  minutes

POLONIUM-210

VENOMOUS AGENT X

Polonium in Litvinenko, believing he had been

poisoned by Thallium, a radioactive isotope.

Another alleged victim of Polonium-210

poison was Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in

2004. He died in a Paris hospital. However, in
      2016 a French court dismissed calls for a
      murder investigation, and that the Polonium
      found in his grave was of an “environmental
      nature.”

X - perhaps the most dangerous of

all known nerve agents, and one

used in the attempted assassina-

tion of Sergei Skripal and his

daughter Yulia.

VX is a dangerous toxic synthetic chemical

compound, first discovered in 1954 by