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
- 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