Yushchenko Was Poisoned by Dioxin
It’s confirmed; Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin.
VIENNA (Reuters) - The man who hopes to become Ukraine’s next president was the victim of poisoning by dioxin — a toxic chemical that can easily be administered in soup containing cream, Austrian doctors said on Saturday.
Viktor Yushchenko, who faces Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich later this month in a re-run of November’s rigged presidential election, long alleged he was poisoned as part of a plot to kill him.
His illness kept him out of the early stages of the election campaign in the former Soviet republic and left his face bloated and pock-marked. “There is no doubt,” Dr Michael Zimpfer, president of the Rudolfinerhaus clinic where Yushchenko is being treated, told a news conference.“ There were high concentrations of dioxin, most likely orally administered.”
He said the dioxin poisoning had been confirmed on Saturday by a laboratory in Amsterdam, which had analyzed a blood sample.
At first Zimpfer declined to comment on whether the dioxin could have been due to accidental poisoning or contamination and said it was a question for the Ukrainian authorities.
But later he said the hospital believed it had been a deliberate act of poisoning.