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by John Weaver

If I simply stood anywhere near Boris Berezovsky, I’m sure my hair would fall out and my skin would turn yellow.

Alexander Litvinenko is simply the last in a long line of stiffs associated with Boris, a line of corpses that stretches back to the mid-nineties. One died from a mysterious nerve toxin applied to the rim of his coffee cup.

If you want to know about Boris Berezovsky, ask former Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov. Except you can’t, because he was blown away in 2004, shortly after writing up Berezovsky’s bullet-ridden bio, ‘Godfather Of Crime’.

The Litvinenko case is notable for the disinformation spread by the UK’s press, where the ‘facts’ have changed daily. Who makes this stuff up? Why, story and pictures supplied by The Godfather’s PR Firm - one with the sole aim of naming the killer as the Kremlin. Or might that just be a smokescreen for a mafia hit? At the very least, it’s a case of Pottinger calling the kettle black.

The media first linked Litvinenko with the poisoning of Yushchenko. How did that come about? Well, PR just happened to contact John Henry, the toxicologist, to put the Thallium rumour about. Shamefaced John now regrets his diagnosis and admits he was misled about aspects of the case. He stood near Boris and, as the Guardian put it today, got his fingers burned.

The BBC reported radioactive metal objects lodged in Litvinov’s intestines. Source? Potttinger PR. Litvinenko’s doctor subsequently complained about the BBC’s unhelpful speculation. But, who cares about facts as long as Putin gets maligned.

Litvinenko didn’t care much for facts either. He was a loose cannon who would say anything and was paid handsomely by Boris for so doing. A good example of one of Livinenko’s rants is an interview where he blames the London 7/7 bombings on Putin. According to Litvinenko, Yassar Arafat, Saddam and al-Zawahiri are all KGB agents too. Litvinenko would give gullible journalists declassified, old 1970s documents marked ’secret’ to prove his cred. Boris bought him a half a million pound house in London. Good job.

The other political link the media has sought to forge is between Litvinenko and Politovskaya. Well, there is a link, but not the one generally publicised. Shortly before Paul Klebnikov was hit, he was investigating the embezzlement of Russian funds intended for reconstruction in Chechnya - a fatal line of enquiry the investigative Politovskaya was also following,

Litvinenko’s rants were published in the UK Chechen press. An interesting link is between Berezovsky, Litvinenko and Zakayev, the Chechen warlord, is that they were all mysteriously given asylum in the UK as ‘needy human rights cases’. Yeah, right.

Why London needs a coterie of foreign criminals is beyond me, but they appear to have some friends in very high places. Even Zhirinovsky has asked the perfectly reasonable question ‘ why Cherie Blair works in a law firm which is servicing our Russian thugs, Berezovsky included.’

It’s bad enough having Lord Bell influence the media on behalf of the Mafia. Even more disturbing is that Scotland Yard did not investigate the case until several days after the poisoning was reported. Does Boris have friends there too? Not important. By this time Britain’s media had secured a conviction.