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License to Kill
Halimi, Serge
http://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/03/license-to-kill-4/Date Written: 2018-04-03 Publisher: CounterPunch Year Published: 2018 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX22303 Halimi places alleged Russian involvement in the attempted assasination of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the context of routine extrajudicial killings by the wider inernational security services. Abstract: - Excerpt: British police say their investigation into the poisoning of former Russian army colonel Sergei Skripal in Salisbury may take many months, yet prime minister Theresa May has already identified the guilty party, claiming the order came from the Kremlin. Foreign secretary Boris Johnson, sees the incident as 'part of a pattern of reckless behaviour by President Vladimir Putin,' which is the 'common thread that joins [the poisoning] with [Russia's] annexation of Crimea, the cyberattacks in Ukraine, the hacking of Germany's parliament … interference in foreign elections' and 'indulgence of Assad's atrocities in Syria' (1). The reasoning goes: if Putin is capable of doing it, then he must be guilty. From Leon Trotsky, killed with an ice pick in Mexico, to Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with polonium in London, Russia's security services have undoubtedly liquidated many opponents of the Kremlin living abroad. Other countries have resorted to such measures without triggering the same diplomatic uproar. France, Germany and the US have been involved in the kind of state-sponsored assassination that has so offended Johnson, yet this has not stopped them joining him and May in railing against Russia Subject Headings |