Poison Identified

Professor Abraham Brouwer, director of the Amsterdam-based Bio Detection Systems laboratory that studies environmental toxicity, has identified the type of dioxin that poisoned Viktor Yushchenko, a candidate for president of Ukraine. “The dioxin is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD) ,” the Dutch toxicologist told RIA Novosti (www.rian.ru) last Friday. He obtained the result on Thursday night after analyzing Yushchenko’s blood sample furnished by Professor Michael Zimpfer, director of the Viennese clinic Rudolfinerhaus. Prof. Brouwer singled out this substance from about 400 varieties of dioxins. The concentration of TCDD in Yushchenko’s blood-100,000 units per gram of blood-was six thousand times higher than normal, the toxicologist said. TCDD can be produced in large quantities only under laboratory conditions and introduced into the body artificially, the scientist stressed.

Prof. Brouwer is now awaiting permission from the Viennese clinic and Yushchenko himself to run other tests that will use the slightest dioxin stains and other indicators to find out where and how the dioxin was produced. This will allow prosecutors to trace those are implicated in poisoning Yushchenko.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Yushchenko blamed top officials of the Security Service of Ukraine for attempting to poison him. The agency notes that Yushchenko for the first time named the exact time and place of the poisoning attempt. According to him, the attempt was made on September 5, 2004, during a dinner with Security Service chief Ihor Smieshko and his second-in-command Volodymyr Satsiuk. “That was the only place where there was no one from my team and where no precautionary measures were taken concerning the food,” Mr. Yushchenko said. Earlier he had promised “to tell the whole truth” about the poisoning after the presidential election in Ukraine.