(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
14 / 10-2016. "If Sasja was alive, I would sit with him here now."
Marina Livtinenko sits with her back to the room. If Aleksandr Litvinenko was alive, he probably would have been sitting opposite the road. The former Russian security services officer would have celebrated 22's wedding anniversary with Marina. They might have sat here, in The Frontline Club, the think tank for democracy and freedom of expression issues. Have Aleksandr celebrate his critically acclaimed books. Celebrate the freedom to stroll from Paddington to The Frontline, the London Freedom. Celebrate everything they've got clear: Oh meeting test. Divorcing former spouses. To get Anatoly, the son, who now finishes at university and is going to become a journalist.
But Aleksandr is not alive. 14. October 2006, on the day six years after he and Marina gained British citizenship, he is poisoned by polonium 210. At the deathbed, Marina Aleksandr promises to have the guilty convicted. Ten years later, on the day, I will soon learn how it has gone.
14 / 10-1994. Marina is breastfeeding Anatoly. He needed her all the time. Marina does not have time to shop for a wedding dress. But she has a routine on arranging her hair. Ho set it back, with needles. Along the other side hung lures that curl with a warm tongue. Well the most beautiful of their dance dresses. The dress is black.
"I was never told to marry. That was Sasja's idea. He was so stingy. "We have to get married, that's very important," he said, with emphasis on "must" and "very."
Aleksandr is wearing a light suit. Then Marina and he travel to the registration office and become husband and wife.
Marina's first marriage was with her own dance partner. "It was convenient to get married. We traveled so much together. Getting married made traveling easier, ”Marina recalled. Aleksandr was also married, but not happy. Marina and he had known each other for a few months when Marina realized that she was pregnant. It wasn't relevant for her to have an abortion.
"But I couldn't be sure what Sasha would say. You know, men ... But he was very happy. He said, 'You can never leave me.' "
Does he fear you would leave him?
"He was never sure I shouldn't. He experienced me as strong and self-reliant. "
The following is available from Marina Litvinenko's testimonies or were told by her during the interview: As an officer in the security test, Aleksandr, late in 1997, was given "a unambiguous instruction to carry out a murder act". This he could do within a "secret, unexplained entity". The job was to kill the scientist and businessman Boris Berezovsky. What would Aleksandr do? He ponders it for several weeks, and then goes to Berezovsky and tells about the order. He complains to his employer and becomes uneasy for his own safety. In April 1998, Marina and he travel to Berezovsky's cottage. Aleksandr tells everything to a camera. "They did this in case anyone should be arrested. Or worse, get killed, ”Marina says.
One half year later, Aleksandr told "everything" in a live press conference. "Never before in the history of Russian security services has FSB got so much more remarkable," Marina says: need protection from. " Aleksandr loses his job. In March 1999, he was arrested.
1999, Butyrk Prison, Moscow. Marina is in a queue to enter. Hours later, she arrived at the hatch. Then she is sent home to. You have to have a permit, they know. Tilla Things? Marina goes home, looks up the prison director's number and calls. "You have to get a license from a central office," he says. The morning after, Marina comes out of a state office with a certificate that she can know her husband in prison. Finally, she is back, with a box of food, and this time she comes all the way through.
"Sasja was shocked when I stood there. No one thought I would come in. Especially not the director of the prison. "
This strength reminds me when you promise Sasiah on death row to have the guilty convicted.
"When I went to prison that time, I was itching and guided by forces I didn't know I had. It is similar to the fight with litigation. I knew I had to act. "
September 2000 Aleksandr tells Marina that he is going to Nalchik to visit the family. Soon he sends her a message from Georgia: He has escaped. Aleksandr asks Marina to bring Anatoly to Spain. Marina has to make a big decision. She has spent her entire life in Moscow, working as an aerobics instructor and personal trainer. Anatoly goes to school. Her parents and all her friends live in the city. But then they pack up and go to Spain. There, Aleksandr waits. Together they travel to Turkey.
"Sasja talked about corruption, criminalization of the FSB and the fact that the system set up to defend people is becoming a system against which people need protection."
“We're starting to feel pretty lost in the world. It was quite open-ended that we could not travel eighteenth to Russia. Could we be in Turkey? We applied for a visa. ”
But then Berezovsky sends people: Alex Goldfarb and his wife come from the United States. They are steady people who take hold in an upset time. Together they drive the car to Istanbul. "They were so calm. Special Mrs. Goldfarb. I knew it was going to go well. " The tour ends in a bust in Kensington, London. Half a year later, the family receives asylum in the UK. Aleksandr writes regime-critical books.
Aleksandr appears to be an uncompromising and courageous man. But you were with him all the way. Was it tough?
'I wasn't always sure what to do. The escape was such a thing. I had my whole life in Moscow. But the decisive thing was probably when I realized that Anatoly could be in danger if we were in Russia. ”
The Frontline Club, 19/10/2006. Journalists, readers, upset people move from Paddington to Norfolk Place. They gather on the second floor of the club. Aleksandr Litvinenko sits on stage. "Who killed Anna Politkovskaya?" ask the program manager. "I can answer that directly," says Aleksandr: "It was Mr. Putin." Also other girls at the Kremlin after the Politkovskaya murder. Russia ranks lower on the Freedom of Expression list for Reporters Without Borders. But Putin sits with power. Journalist and author Luke Harding tells me later: "Russians have never experienced real democracy. They had a quasi-democracy under Yeltsin. People who rent will have a good standard of living. Above all, they are looking for comfort. Author Sofi Oksanen also expressed a similar view in an interview I did with her this fall: "Russians associate 'democracy' with chaos and fall in living standards. Most people in Russia would rather have a strong despot than a good person who rents. "
Twelve days after the interview on The Frontline, Aleksandr meets old colleagues from the KGB and drinks tea with them. In the tea, it is polonium. Aleksandr gets sick. He treats Legane for bacterial infection. "I am poisoned," says Aleksandr. Legane thinks he's crazy. Marina the big man. How he thinks. After a quarter, the doctors also realize this. Aleksandr gets worse for the hour that goes by. The hair falls off. Vital organs fail. Anatoly cites the danger and describes the condition as "seeing a plastic patch". It looks like something living. But it is artificial, a plastic shell. Marina knows that Aleksandr is going to die. But she has to go home in the evenings to be there for Anatoly. To Alexander, he says: "I will get the guilty punishment." Aleksandr dies. Anatoly asks her mother, "Are you getting depressed now?"
"It was a wise question. I had to answer, and the answer was no, ”Marina says. When Aleksandr is dead, he begins the fight for the cause. It begins, in some way, with her own investigation.
The Frontline Club, 2007. "This is not about a man's death. It's about the UK and Russia, ”Marina says. Ho and Alex Goldfarb sit on The Frontline with the book Death of a dissident in front of them. It has them writing in collaboration, in record time. But as impressive as the speed is, the rapture they have had, in a rush where theories of the murder are manifold. All theories cannot be true. Everything is possible. In Russia, the propaganda machinery depicts Aleksandr as a traitor and a weak person. Some say that it was Berezovsky who murdered him. Others that he was killed by British security services. One then disregards what we know today: that traces of polonium go from Moscow to London and eighteenth to the two KGB colleagues. Marina is in many ways alone. Ho believes veins keep a distance because of polonium fear.
"I was contaminated, so I can understand fear. But polonium does not become toxic until you take it in, drink it, inhale.
200 police officers are put on trial. Dei checks over 60 cities – hotels, offices, restaurants, public transport. Andrej Lugovoj will be targeted in 2007, and in 2011, Dmitri Kovtun. One knows the woman who killed him. But why? If the investigation is to proceed, they will need access to a secret document. The cause must rise to a level, to host a case for disruption of public order: a mini-nuclear effort in the streets of London. Home Secretary Theresa May sighed. Marina is in the room when the decision is read. Ho cried. But she doesn't give up. Now she is also supported by a new lawyer, young Elena Tsirlina. "I just knew we had a case. And everyone we were in contact with, in court, through the media: Everyone was touched by the case. It was no ordinary thing. Sir Owen understood that. He was particularly sympathetic to us. " Sir Robert Owen is the one to come forward Inquiries Act 2005 and get through the public inquiry of business. It begins July 31, 2014 and closes July 31, 2015. Owen signs a report that concludes with the words: "The FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr. Patrushev and also by President Putin."
"Who killed Anna Politkovskaya?" ask the program manager. "I can answer that directly," says Aleksandr: "It was Mr. Putin."
Are you mad at Putin?
"I'm angry about what he's doing with Russia. He planted seeds of selfishness and enmity. Now seeds have sprouted, and enmity and selfishness grows.
Why did they elect him as president?
"Putin came in after Yeltsin. Yeltsin was seen as an alcoholic clown. Then Putin came and showed strength. That's what they wanted. "
Wedding day will be for wedding night. We left the Fronline Club and went to have dinner with the lawyer. Elena Tsirlina is also Marina's best friend. Ho says this about the experimental build-up and demolition of democracy in Russia: "People were disillusioned when they saw that communism, the beautiful ideology, did not work when people were mixed up in the ideas." Elena grew up in Moscow and has respect for what Russia was. But now they call Britain their home. This is where she has been bidding for the last 23 years. Elena does not want to go back to Russia, and has not been there since 2014. Both for her and for Marina it can be unsafe to go to Russia. Putin is still receiving high support, up to 85 per cent on polling measurements. But can one believe that people are honest when they answer the surveys? Are their voices also lying? Everything feels possible. For better or worse.
In the UK, the narrative is more than one straight story and summarized in paragraphs: "probably murdered on personal orders of Putin" (from Litvinenkoinquiry.org). But Marina thinks it's getting too quiet. When Elena and Ho mark the 23th anniversary of the death on November XNUMX, they ask whether Theresa May and the British government are so quiet. Marina is still waiting for it to take further steps to get the guilty convicted.
Ny Tid also recommends watching Andrei Nekrasov's Litvinenko documentary: Rebellion: Litvinenko case from 2007.
