Posted on 12/07/2006 1:56:26 PM PST by kronos77
LONDON (Reuters) - Huddled against the December chill, the wife and young son of Alexander Litvinenko led a small crowd of mourners on Thursday at a private London funeral while confusion surrounded his deathbed conversion to Islam.
Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky and separatist Chechen leader Akhmed Zakayev, two of the Kremlin's most outspoken exiled critics, were among the six pallbearers who lowered Litvinenko into his grave at Highgate cemetery in north London.
He was laid to rest two weeks after dying from radiation poisoning in a case that has revived echoes of the Cold War and raised tensions between London and Moscow.
CONVERSION CONTROVERSY
But there was controversy to the very end over Litvinenko's reported conversion to Islam shortly before his death.
"He asked to be buried in accordance with Muslim traditions and customs," Chechen rebel Zakayev, himself a Muslim, told Reuters on the eve of the funeral.
He said Litvinenko was disillusioned with the Russian Orthodox Church because, as a former security agent, he had seen how some priests collaborated with the KGB secret police by passing on details of churchgoers' confessions.
But another friend of Litvinenko, Alexander Goldfarb, said he had "strong reservations" about the deathbed conversion and that the graveside Muslim prayers were against the wishes of the dead man's widow, Marina.
"It was supposed to be a non-religious, non-denominational ceremony according to the wishes of the widow," Goldfarb said, adding that Marina had allowed the rites to go ahead to avoid an "unseemly situation".
Earlier, some of the mourners attended noon prayers at London's central mosque.
"Thank you to my son's brothers in faith that they remember him and pray for him," Walter Litvinenko said.
(Excerpt) Read more at today.reuters.co.uk ...
I don't know, not being a nuclear weapons expert, but publicly available discussions of triggers for plutonium bombs describe mixing polonium (an alpha emitter) with beryllium to produce a neutron source: when beryllium nuclei of the appropriate isotope are hit by energetic alpha particles, the shed a neutron of low enough energy to be captured by plutonium nuclei.
If the polonium and beryllium are mixed in advance, the neutron emission is wasted, so the mechanism must be able to mix polonium with beryllium during the detonation sequence, suggesting that the two compounds would be finely powdered in the trigger.
Inhaled, licked fingers, had a bit fall out of his pocket or cuff onto his sushi, who knows?
Polonium-210 is a low-melting, fairly volatile metal, 50% of which is vaporized in air in 45 hours at 55C.
Perhaps enough of it vaporized at room temperature that he received a lethal dose just from inhaling.
The idea that this was a Putin hit job is looking less credible.
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