The services of professional poisoners - fanatics and special services - have been used since the time of Rome. Says Doctor of Biological Sciences

For centuries, the poisoners used drugs obtained from plants and minerals, not knowing the mechanism of their action. From the 1st century came the name of the Roman Lokusta. Her paid services were used by the emperors of Caligula, Nero and his mother Agrippin, who poisoned his husband Emperor Claudius. Chemical science did not exist then. Lokosta had no idea that the compounds of arsenic inhibit the energy exchange, but was able to mix them into food, causing a chronic disease of the nervous and digestive systems. She knew how to prepare an extract from the Aconite plant. Now we know that a mixture of alkaloids of aconithin and Zangorin is absorbed through the skin and has a deadly convulsive paralytic effect. Similarly acted through the digestive system of the Toxy Tsikuta .

The locomot was operating so brazenly that in the 68th year the Emperor Galba personally ordered the poisoner to execute.

In Italy of the XVII century. The family of Tofan became famous. The most famous is theophany of Di Adamo (“Madam Tofan”), behind which there were more than 600 poisoning, including the pope of the Roman Clement XIV and the contender for the French throne of the duke of Anjou. She was helped by her daughter. Enterprising ladies established the sale of Aqua Tofan - a colorless and no smell of liquid. It allegedly contained soluble compounds of arsenic and an extract of the Belladonna . High ties did not help the poisoners: they all graduated from life, if not on the gallows, then at the stake of the Inquisition.

Most of the “classic” types of poison acted only when taking food, and in high concentrations. This greatly complicated the task. However, at the turn of the 19th century, analytical chemistry began to develop, plant and mineral poisons familiar from antiquity learned to clean and use in low concentrations. New ones appeared: in 1762, potassium cyanide was discovered, blocking the processes of cellular respiration - the one that in 1916 the conspirators ineptly tried to poison Grigory Rasputin. Cyanium potassium is synical acid salt. Later, on its basis, Cyclone B was developed, which the Nazis used for massacres in gas chambers. With the help of potassium cyanide, they committed suicide in 1945 and many higher Nazi functionaries.

In 1818, an alkaloid strychin was received from the seeds of the tropical plant of Chilibuha (vomit), one and a half times more toxic than potassium cyanide. Like the venom of the cicuts, it blocks the inhibition processes in the motor departments of the nervous system, causing convulsions and death from the paralysis of the respiratory muscles.

The criminal craft finally passed from sorcerers and healers into the hands of chemical scientists.

It was they who drew attention to the poison of Kurara , which South American Indians from ancient times prepared from the bark of the Strichnos plant-an American relative of the vomit. The Indians used the Kurare to poison arrows when hunting small game. Chemists managed to distinguish the current beginning - Tubokururin, and then synthesize his artificial analogues. This has opened up the possibility for the medical and criminal use of these substances intramuscularly. Curare -like drugs violate the transfer of nerve impulses to the muscles, causing death from respiratory paralysis, and it is technically difficult to posthumously determine their presence.

Saksitoxins , which are produced by unicellular algae and accumulate in the body of mollusks, have a similar effect. It was reported that Saxitoxin was supposed to use Cuban emigrants against Fidel Castro, but a coal -organized attempt failed at the preparation stage.

Since the primary source of saucritoxin is microorganisms, it can be considered as a biological weapon. The use of such substances by US intelligence services was prohibited by a special directive in 1969.

In 1862, a thallium was isolated from mineral raw materials, a metal that forms high toxic, well -soluble compounds in water without taste, color and smell. They violate biochemical processes involving sulfur, blocking protein metabolism. Tallia compounds were used for a long time to combat rats, cockroaches and ants. Easy accessibility often made these substances with tools of “household” criminal terrorism. The use of Tallia of the East German special services of the Stasi was provided for by the instructions published after the unification of the country. Its use by the court was proved by the court in 1981 when trying to poison the East German dissident Wolfgang Velsh.

Tallium can accumulate in the body, causing diverse, variable and deadly symptoms that are aggravated when taking any of its three radioactive isotopes. That is how in 1957 they tried to poison Nikolai Khokhlov - the Soviet intelligence officer, who received an order to kill the figure of emigration George Okolovich, but instead surrendered to the German authorities.

This is the first known attempt using a radioactive substance.

In 2006, with the help of radioactive polonium-210 in London, a former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was killed. Unlike chemical poisons, traces of such poisoning are easy to establish, so they usually are demonstrative, frightening.

Weapons and guns

Combat poisoning substances are technically unprofitable for sabotage and terrorist targets due to difficulties in transportation and indistinguishable action, and “individual-purpose” poisons are ineffective on the battlefield due to low or, conversely, excessive stability in the external environment. For example, ricin turned out to be poorly accepted as a combat weapon - a by -product of castor oil, irreversibly blocking protein synthesis and six thousand times more poisonous than potassium cyanide. Poisoning occurs during injury, swallowing or inhalation of dust particles. Ricin is relatively easy to obtain in artisanal conditions. This led to its use for criminal purposes or simply mentally unstable people like those who sent letters with Ricin to the US officials.

In 1979, after a shot with a capsule with a ricin from a pneumatic pistol disguised as an umbrella in London, dissident Georgy Markov died. The dose of poison he received was insignificant. A year earlier, under similar circumstances, his compatriot Vladimir Kostov was saved by Parisian doctors. The investigation conducted after the 1989 revolutionary events showed that both attempts were organized by Bulgarian special services with the assistance of the KGB of the USSR.

In the late 1930s, German chemists received a series of extremely toxic organic compounds containing phosphorus- herd , sarin , and a little later Zoman . All phosphoruscorganic poisons, including domestic carbophos and dichlofos, block the enzyme cholinsterase that regulates the neuromuscular transmission of excitation. This causes cramps with subsequent paralysis. Deadly when applying to the skin and when it enters the digestive tract. Fanatics from the Aum Sinrikyo sect ( the organization was recognized as terrorist and banned in the Russian Federation. - Ed. ) Prepared terrorist attacks in the Tokyo metro with it and this made it sense for the international search for chemical weapons factories in Iraq and Syria.

For 1945, at the disposal of Hitler Germany there were up to 15 thousand tons of herd and about a ton of more toxic dawn. Hitler did not dare to apply them on the battlefield, fearing the response chemical bombing of Germanic cities. After the war, chemical arsenals, along with the developers, went to allies. So, since 1922, a member of the Nazi party, Peter Tissen in the USSR became the laureate of the Stalinist and state prizes for working on the technology of obtaining chlorine trifluoride (“substance N”) - extremely toxic suffocating gas, which found the use of atomic industry and missile construction. Later, Zarin and his analogues were used at the front of the Iran-Iraq war, as well as during civil wars in Iraq and Syria.

After the war, one of the leaders in the development of poisonous substances was neutral Sweden, which developed chemical weapons as an alternative to nuclear. Thus, a generation of phosphoruscorganic poisons appeared associated with the name of toxicologist Lars Tammelin. “Tammelin’s poisons”, or V-gas, are an order of magnitude more toxic than the herd and sarin, but at the same time they are more stable in the external environment, have less volatility and easily penetrate through the skin. Poisoning can occur when touching the door handle, reading a letter or a throat of water with an insignificant concentration of poison. Similarly, a group of substances known as "beginners" acts. When Russian officials deny their existence, they say almost the truth: in the same way there was no Satan missiles, Backfire and Bear bombers, and Oscar submarines. Similar conventions of Soviet and Russian weapons are used by the world media and NATO documents.

V-hazes and “newcomers” on the battlefield were never used, but were effective as a powerful, although not enough selective means of individual terror. They are associated with attempts on banker Ivan Kivividi, intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, politics of Alexei Navalny, and the liquidation of the Islamic terrorist Hattaba during the Chechen war. The VX substance became an instrument of murder in the emigration of the older brother of the North Korean dictator - Kim Jong Nam.

Poison of operational significance

The use of poisons rarely practices most intelligence - either from disgust, or because a fitted bomb or a well -aimed bullet is more reliable in time. At one time, the CIA was never able to find a performer to poison the left African politician Patrice Lumuba, and

Israel itself ensured the treatment of the leader of the Hamas Haleda Moshal movement after a failure attempt.

Both of these stories, as well as the numerous “attempts” on Fidel Castro, show how experienced and strong intelligence services of democratic countries vainly tried to do not their own business, in which success is the destiny of institutions generated by a completely different society.

Among the characters of the gloomy film by Eldar Ryazanov “Prediction”, one has an easily recognizable prototype. This is the venerable scientist, he is a Killer-Operator of the NKVD Igor Poplavsky. In the world, his name was Grigory Mayranovsky, and he became a doctor of medical sciences and professor on the basis of “secret works of great operational significance” (later the investigation qualified them as “inhuman experiments on living people”. Work was performed in the toxicological laboratory of the NKVD-MCB, which in the 1920s was called “special The cabinet ”, later on the Laboratory of X and was formally at the All -Union Institute of Biochemistry and then transferred to the NKVD.

The “products” of the laboratories were tested on prisoners and exiles with the personal participation of Colonel of the Medical Service and Honored Worker of the NKVD of Mayranovsky. Among the poisons were preferred by Kurara and Strichnin. So the Greek-Catholic Archbishop Theodore Romzha, the Comintern, Aisek Oggins and, possibly, the Swedish diplomat Raul Vallenberg died. The former People's Commissar of Education of Ukraine Alexander Shumsky was poisoned on the train, and the Polish military engineer Naum Samet in the car after abduction on the street. The personal participation of Mayranovsky has been proved for more than 150 fatal poisoning. He still served his 10 years in the Vladimir Central after the death of Stalin-unlike another possible prototype, academician Sergei Muromtsev.

The German Nazis are sadly known for inhuman medical experiments in concentration camps. Sigmund Rasher and August Hirt - Hauptsturmfuhrers of the SS were engaged there, whose scale of the crimes of whose crimes was not inferior to the deeds of Dr. The death of Joseph Mengele. Just like Mengel, they did not appear before the trial: Rasher was accused of fraud and liquidated the Nazis themselves at the end of the war, and Hirt was missing at the same time.

In the Dachau camp, in particular, the action of pistol bullets poisoned by aconitin was studied. This method was not effective, since high temperature neutralizes the action of poisons. Thus, poisoning was not confirmed during the attempts of Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan on Vladimir Lenin in 1918 and the Czechoslovak anti-fascists-on the Hitler's governor of the Rhineard Heydrich in 1942

For terrorist purposes, instead of gunshot or explosive, pneumatic and mechanical devices are used, such as the “Bulgarian umbrella” - a pneumatic pistol disguised as an umbrella, shooting poison capsules. In 1957–59, the Killer of Soviet Intelligence, Bogdan Stashinsky, killed the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera in Germany, using a gas gun charged with synical acid . Due to the high volatility of the poison, the cause of death was not established in both cases. Clarity occurred only in 1961, when Stashinsky voluntarily surrendered to the authorities of Germany. Having served a prison term, he was released and disappeared without a trace. They say that under a new name and with an altered appearance he is still alive.

On the other side of evil

The poisoners have always caused disgust. They were despised, but used services in political, financial and criminal conflicts.

One can only be surprised at the number of arsenic, lead and mercury contained, for example, in the mummies of Egyptian nobles and the hair of Moscow queens,

either write off this "mineralization" on the composition of ancient drugs or cosmetics

The chemical weapon was banned by the 1925 Geneva Convention, the provisions of which were developed in 1994. Since 1997, an organization has been in force to prohibit chemical weapons (OPCO). The attempt on political murder with a poisonous substance is an act of chemical war, a war crime. In accordance with international law, the guilty of violating the laws and customs of war are subject to search and legend to the court in the territory of any country - participants of the Geneva Convention. For this, and not something else, according to the verdict of the Iraqi court, hung the former president of Saddam Hussein and his cousin, nicknamed Chemical Ali. The same accusations were charged when withdrawing inviolability from the ex-president Chile Augusto Pinochet.

In the 1950s, the USSR spent a lot of effort so that the effect of conventions on the laws and customs of war extends to conflicts of a non-national nature. Under those, Soviet diplomats reasoned “national liberation movements” and the terrorist activities of the Leutrian groups. They did not think that such lawmaking can turn into a boomerang.

Andrey Pugovkin, Doctor of Biological Sciences