dioxin
the poisoning case which shocked the world and rallied ukrainian voters behind victor yushchenko five years ago remains open. but as president yushchenko registered his candidacy with the central election committee on oct. 27 to run for re-election in 2010, his chances to stay in the seat seemed as slim as the chances to ever see it solved.
pointing to yushchenko’s penchant for distorting facts for political advantage, analysts in kyiv and abroad say the mystery has become emblematic of incumbent’s own insecurity and ambition.
the alleged assassination attempt in september 2004 turned around what had been a lackluster presidential campaign and set the stage for the orange revolution. but it appears unlikely to impact the results of the upcoming poll, in which the incumbent is expected to lose by landslide.
the case climbed back into the news in september when the incumbent again accused russia of harboring three individuals he suspects of perpetrating the callous act. official investigators, meanwhile, remained literally clueless, saying they have not identified a motive for the crime or suspects.
an open case
general prosecutor oleksandr medvedko has declared officially that the case yushchenko’s poisoning remains open. “the investigation continues. there are no people we can press charges against,” medvedko said on oct. 9.
yushchenko, on the other hand, has for many years insisted that he knows who poisoned him and when.
most recently, in an interview broadcast on sept. 28 on ukrainian television 1+1, yushchenko told millions of ukrainians that moscow is obstructing the probe by not turning over the host, waiter and chef of a dinner party he had attended five years ago.
three weeks earlier, the president told the german magazine der spiegel that the investigation was completed.
“for four years, people who directly organized my poisoning have been in moscow. i have addressed russia's president three times and asked them to be questioned by ukrainian investigators in our embassy in moscow. the suspects include a former deputy secret service head, the waiter, and the cook. all these people are in moscow.”
the host, waiter and cook
the men yushchenko referred to are volodymyr satsyuk, the former deputy chief of ukraine’s sbu state security service, possibly his associate taras zalesskiy, and sukhrab fakhriev, an uzbek chef.
on the evening of september 5, 2004 they served yushchenko, david zhvania, yushchenko’s election campaign financial manager, and ihor smeshko, sbu chief at the time, at satsyuk’s country house outside of kyiv.
yushchenko had reportedly been drinking heavily during campaign appearances and meetings that day, including shots of moonshine prepared by a villager in chernihiv oblast. during the late night supper at satsyuk’s house, which lasted from 10:30 p.m. through 3:00 a.m., the men ate crayfish and pilaf. they washed down the fare with beer, vodka, cognac, and whisky.
yushchenko complained the next morning of an acute migraine and back pain. he spent the next four days sick at home in his kyiv apartment. he was seen by doctors, but refused to be hospitalized in ukraine. late on sept. 9, he flew to the vienna-based rudolfinerhaus clinic, which promptly diagnosed him with acute pancreatitis.
oleksandr zinchenko, yushchenko’s head of election campaign, flew to vienna to confer with clinic doctors. on sept. 17, he dropped a political bombshell announcing that yushchenko had been poisoned. he based the allegation on the conclusions of mykola korpan, yushchenko’s attending physician at the clinic, who at the time did not rule out poisoning.
doctors struggled for the next several months to diagnose and treat the presidential candidate’s sickness. blood and other samples had been taken from yushchenko at that point, according to korpan, but it’s not clear whether they were analyzed.
from the early days of the poisoning case into
yushchenko’s first months in office, he said he suspected satsyuk, zalesskiy and fakhriev of being directly involved in his poisoning. all three men remained in ukraine after
yushchenko was inaugurated president. all three men were questioned numerous times and released.
despite yushchenko’s repeated claims that the men are evading justice by hiding out in russia, the kyiv post found the cook.
fakhriev said in a telephone interview that he currently provides kaliyan (hookah) water pipe services to cafes and restaurants in kyiv. fakhriev told the post on oct. 6, oct. 19 and oct. 26 that he had been questioned by investigators and released. “i did nothing wrong,” he said each time. “i did not leave ukraine.”
satsyuk, zalesskiy and fakhriev are not suspects in the official investigation, as yushchenko has alleged, according to prosecutor general medvedko. “they have the same status in the case as kateryna chumachenko [yushchenko’s wife,” the general prosecutor said.
satsyuk, who had worked with yushchenko during the late 1990s at ukraina bank, relocated to russia in june 2005 after state prosecutors opened a criminal case against him for alleged counterfeiting, forgery and fraud. he is currently wanted by interpol for these crimes - not in connection with poisoning the yushchenko.
zalesskiy left ukraine on nov. 15, 2006, the day after yushchenko said during a press conference that “there is enough information to handcuff the perpetrators of the crime and put them in jail.” zalesskiy has his own website, ukraina kriminalnaya, through which he has repeatedly denied poisoning yushchenko.
the authorities are to blame
after three days of intensive therapy at rudolfinerhaus clinic, yushchenko felt better, well enough to leave the clinic on sept. 13 and walk around vienna. the disfiguring paralysis of a facial nerve occurred the next night.
korpan wrote: “the overall negative condition of the patient was no doubt caused by a severe virus or, perhaps, by chemical substances not ordinarily found in food products.”
a day later, upon his return to kyiv, yushchenko declared at a rally that he was the victim of a deliberate murder attempt and accused “the current authorities” of committing the crime.
“the murderers are the authorities,” presidential candidate yushchenko declared on sept. 21 in parliament.
the presidential candidate returned to rudolfinerhaus clinic on sept. 30 exhibiting an unexplainable acne-like skin condition.
before the repeat run-off presidential election, rudolfinerhaus clinic on dec. 12 announced officially that yushchenko had been poisoned with dioxin.
president-elect yushchenko on december 29, 2004 said in a televised interview that he had already determined “for himself” who was behind the poisoning. the number of perpetrators was small, he said, “three or four people,” adding that law-enforcement authorities were faced with the “simple task” of identifying the suspects, a process that would take “several weeks.”
but several weeks dragged on and turned into five years.
forensic facts
one of yushchenko’s attending physicians, oliver sorg, had said in july 2005 said that with the passing of time “it will become more difficult to determine whether the yushchenko was poisoned ten months ago, and even more difficult to determine the week poison was introduced to his system.”
but it wasn’t until late 2005 – more than a year after the alleged poisoning - that mykola poludenniy, former deputy head of the presidential secretariat and the president’s legal representative, conducted the first official international forensic examination within the framework of the criminal case. german, belgian and british laboratories confirmed dioxin poisoning for the first time in the history of the case.
the results suggested that yushchenko had imbibed not less than 2 milligrams of dioxin, a dose no larger than a dozen grains of salt. poison experts said the dioxin entered yushchenko’s body from 2 hours to 48 hours before he fell ill.
former sbu chief ihor smeshko told the post on oct. 15: “i do not believe that it is possible to determine to the day when yushchenko was poisoned based on the results of only one official medical expertise made a year later. i insist that the sbu had nothing to do with yushchenko’s health in 2004. my conscience is clear.”
the case took a bizarre twist after parliamentary elections in 2007 when david zhvania (until then considered yushchenko’s close friend) declared that yushchenko had not been poisoned deliberately after all.
“it was ordinary food poisoning. that’s what the doctors said,” zhvania told bbc. asked to explain laboratory reports of yushchenko’s blood samples confirming dioxin in his system, zhvania said, “all these analyses are complete fakes.”
yushchenko responded that zhvania had “taken part and planned” his poisoning in 2004.
korpan from rudolfinerhaus clinic told the post on oct. 9 that there is no rational explanation for what happened to yushchenko’s face except for chloracne, a symptom of dioxin poisoning. “the evidence does not support any other version", he said.
poludenniy, former deputy head of the presidential secretariat, declined comment when asked by the post whether foreign poison experts were informed how much alcohol yushchenko consumed the night of the dinner.
a brief in the medical journal the lancet on oct. 9 says the identification of the poison in yushchenko’s body - pure dioxin - was delayed until late december 2004 because the presence of dioxin is not routinely investigated in medical practice in a patient with signs of acute poisoning. the study found that yushchenko has to date expelled about 95 percent of the dioxin from his body.
ukrainian dioxin experts from the kyiv-based medved institute of eco-hygiene and toxiology, in late 2007 published an article, titled, “dioxins: threat of misuse in possible acts of chemical terrorism.” the brief said, “acute dioxin poisoning of humans is characterized by latent period lasting 1-4 weeks after the poison is introduced to the human body.”
dead end
several versions of the alleged crime have been batted about over the past five years, all of them based on the motives of possible perpetrators. no hard evidence has been produced to back up any of them, including yushchenko’s.
satsyuk’s lawyer, victor petrunenko, told the post on oct. 5 that responding to yushchenko’s most recent allegations would be a waste of time. “no comment. my client is a witness in the criminal investigation, as are many others. he is not a suspect,” petrunenko said.
satsyuk’s dacha in early 2005 was combed with a fine tooth comb for traces of the poison, dioxin. the tableware and plumbing were checked. nothing was found.
andrew wilson, author of “virtual politics, faking democracy in the post-soviet world,” said the poisoning case is important “because we know less today than we did five years ago.” he referred to the case as “ukraine’s mysteriously un-investigated poisoning.”
volodymyr fesenko, chairman of penta center for applied political studies, said the general prosecutor’s office has not even established the motives of the person or people who may have arranged the crime. “by pointing the finger at russia now, the incumbent appears to be looking for sympathy abroad and for support in the upcoming election,” fesenko said. “it’s always easier to blame someone else for your own failure.”
“victor yushchenko has not delivered on most of the promises he made five years ago. he is now hanging out the prospect of solving ukraine’s most resonant crimes as a last ditch attempt him to save face,” said taras berezovets, a political analyst at the kyiv-based polittech think tank. “it will not work.”