Opinion by: Peter Wani and Kur Riak
AN INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS
This piece examines the claim made by an anonymous author a couple of days ago, accusing two National Security generals, Bol Mel and Manasa Machar of having used a laptop fitted with radioactive materials that can produce or trigger cancer, as arsenic, asbestos, ionizing radiation, ultra-violet rays, X rays, meant to harm the president in long run in a presentation attended by H.E the president of the Republic of South Sudan.
We have no interest in engaging in petty social media wars but this rebuttal is necessitated by the fact that the matter is of national concern since it touches the security of the Head of State and the personality of two progressive Generals.
In the cited article, the authors claimed that “Gen. Bol Mel and Manasa Machar made a presentation to H.E using Laptop fitted with radioactive material that can produce or trigger cancer, as arsenic, asbestos, ionizing radiation, ultra-violet rays, X rays, meant to harm the president in long run.”
An average intellectual with basic knowledge of science will dismiss the claim on the ground that radioactive radiations are indiscriminate and usually affect any living thing within the circumference and intensity of a radioactive source.
We don’t want to bore you with expert knowledge on radioactive materials and their properties but we seek your indulgence to look through few examples of world popular case stories of how radioactive materials have been used.
1. The Karlsruhe plutonium affair: Johannes M. was convicted of attempting to poison his ex-wife in 2001 with Radioactive material, plutonium stolen from WAK, a small-scale reprocessing plant where he worked. He did not steal a large amount of plutonium, only rags used for wiping surfaces and a small amount of liquid waste. At least two people (besides the criminal) were contaminated by plutonium. Two flats in Landau in the Rhineland–Palatinate where Johannes M. lived were contaminated and had to be cleaned at a cost of two million euro.
2. The Case of Russian Agent: Russian agents used the radioactive elements to poison former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. Former Russian intelligence colleagues reportedly poured the substance into his tea. 23 days elapsed between the day when he was hospitalized and his death. Polonium 210 cannot be bought on the market. In nature, it only appears in marginal quantities as a product of radioactive decay. The world’s nuclear powers are the only countries able to produce polonium in quantities that could be used to kill. In order to produce the lethal dose of 100 nanograms, one would need several hundred kilograms of raw uranium ore. Where would an SSPDF General find this?
Generally, any assassination involving radioactive material is effective if ingested, inhaled, or through piercing as in the popular umbrella case of Georgi Markov who was assassinated on a London street via a micro-engineered pellet. Markov was shot in the leg with a pellet fired from an umbrella wielded by someone associated with the Bulgarian Secret Service.
In fact, we suspect the author has no knowledge of what s/he was talking about be it radioactive radiations or carcinogenic sources. Probably the author wrote the article over a glass of beer.
The author also claimed that the method of using radioactive materials has been applied in assassinating many African heads of states but failed to mention a single African president who fell victim as a result of radioactive poisoning.
Whoever wrote the article in question must have been driven by envy and hatred. The alleged assassination scheme, we believed, was a mere fabrication.
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