Did Russian Agencies Try to Poison Politkovskaya Attorney in France?

of Anna Politkovskaya, Karinna
Moskalenko, who is serving as the lawyer for the family of the deceased and
is currently in France, discovered that someone had placed a large quantity
of mercury in her car in an apparent effort to poison her and her family.

She and the members of her family are in satisfactory condition
but will have to undergo treatment, "Novaya gazeta" editor Sergey Sokolov
said in an article posted on his newspaper's website late last night. French
police, he continued, are investigating the case at the present time (
www.novayagazeta.ru/news/335221.html).

Sokolov noted that Moskalenko has taken part in many
high-profile cases, including representing the interests of former Yukos
head Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Chechens who have appealed to the European
Court of Human Rights concerning the violation of their constitutional and
legal rights by Russian force structures.

The editor said that "the French police have not made any
conclusion relative to the motives of this crime or commented on the status
of the investigation." And in a telephone message to one of her friends, she
said that "she can't directly link the attempt on her life and the life of
her children" to the Politkovskaya case.

But if neither French officials nor Moskalenko herself are yet
prepared to do so, the timing of this attack - one apparently intended to
prevent her from appearing at the hearing - and the method of the attack -
one that recalls the use of polonium against Aleksandr Litvinenko in London
- are certain to lead many to conclude that it was the work of Russian
security services.

In the current environment, should the French police find
evidence linking Russian officials or their agents to this crime, that in
itself would undoubtedly have a major impact on opinion official and
otherwise in France and throughout the European Union concerning the nature
of the increasingly assertive Russian government.

That is all the more so given the media firestorm provoked by
reports in the Georgian media at the end of last week that have now been
picked up by Moscow outlets that the Russian government has ordered its
security agencies to assassinate Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili (
www.kommersant.ru/doc-y.aspx?DocsID=1040153).

According to Georgian media, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of
the Russian Security Council, has ordered the FSB and GRU to "take out"
Saakashvili, and these agencies in turn have recruited an Ossetian named
Teymuraz Pliyev, who lost his family during the recent war and who
supposedly is prepared to kill the Georgian leader for revenge.

Neither Georgian officials nor experts put much credence in
these reforms. According to the Georgian interior ministry, Tbilisi "does
not have any serious information about this and there is thus nothing to
comment about." And Mamuka Areshidze, an expert on the Caucasus, noted that
Ossetians do not generally go in for blood feuds.

But former FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin, who now works as a
lawyer, told Moscow's Sobkorr.ru portal that "theoretically an attack is
possible since already for more than a year there has been in effect a
decree, adopted for the struggle against terrorism, that the FSB can attack
by various methods abroad, up to the physical removal of a suspected
terrorist."

And because various Moscow officials, including both President
Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, have denounced
Saakashvili as "a criminal," this decree could be used to give the order to
the FSB or the GRU to organize an attempt on the life of the Georgian leader
(www.sobkorr.ru/news/48F2FB6295FA2.html).

Trepashkin suggested however that "the murder of Saakashvili"
now would be politically counterproductive: Were it to happen, it would
generate a new wave of anti-Russian sentiment in governments and peoples
around the world because with such a move "everything would become obvious."

In a commentary on this case, Sobkorr.ru observer Sergey
Petrunin said that there was yet another reason why most people in the
Russian political leadership would probably be reluctant to physically
liquidate the leader of a neighboring country, even one as despised as the
Georgian president clearly is.

Such an action would remove the taboo that has been in place
since the execution of Stalin's secret police chief Lavrenty Beriya in 1953
and quite possibly open the door to more political killings not only abroad
but inside the Russian Federation itself, something that could put even
those who might authorize the death of Saakashvili at risk in the future.