People who can testify or oppose Putin have this unhappy tendency to wind up dead.
Via Daily Beast:
LONDON — The bright yellow trumpet-shaped flowers of Gelsemium elegans are only found among the foothills and mountains of Asia. Beautiful to look at, they trigger a rapid assault on the nerve and respiratory systems when swallowed.
The plant’s deadly qualities were first identified in the 1870s by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Despite warnings that the Kremlin wanted Alexander Perepilichnyy dead, modern British detectives concluded that there was nothing suspicious in his sudden collapse during a run in the suburbs outside London in November 2012.
Despite warnings that the Kremlin wanted the 44-year-old whistleblower dead, British detectives eventually concluded that Perepilichnyy’s death was not suspicious.
That was before Professor Monique Simmonds, a leading botanist at Kew Gardens in West London, stunned British officials by disclosing that traces of Gelsemium elegans were present in Perepilichnyy’s body. The plant, which is also known as “heartbreak grass,” had not been identified in any of the original toxicology investigations.
“Given that it is a known weapon of assassination by Chinese and Russian contract killers, why was it in his stomach?” asked Bob Moxon Browne, a lawyer speaking at a pre-inquest hearing in Surrey on Monday. The coroner halted the inquest and ordered further tests to determine whether the plant’s poisonous properties had spread through the Russian’s body. The plant was reportedly used in the murder of a Chinese tycoon in 2012, when a business rival sprinkled the poisonous herb into a cat meat stew.