Global Jihad: temi, piste di diffusione e il fenomeno del reducismo ...

in the “means” that international, regional and domestic initiatives can act effectively
to deny terrorists the ability to perpetrate their attacks.
Assassination – the surreptitious administration of ionising radiation to an
individual
The possibility of using radioactive materials as a tool for assassination has largely
been ignored in these times, where the focus of the associated dangers of NR
terrorism is traditionally on mass casualty events. However, given the relative ease of
access to radiological materials (as discussed in the following section) and its
flexibility to be used as equally for poisoning individuals and for contaminating
large areas, this possibility
must not be ignored.
There are a number of advantages attractive to a non-state actor in using radiation to
murder another. Firstly, there is no known cure to acute radiation poisoning;
secondly, the public response to such an act would be of the greatest magnitude in
these times of heightened sensitivity to use of unconventional weapons; and, thirdly,
as with biological and many chemical agents, individuals cannot normally detect
ionising radiation by hearing, sight, odour, touch, or other normal sense without
specialised equipment. It is difficult to detect radiation prior to becoming poisoning
and the likelihood therefore of contracting
the illness is higher.
There have been very few cases of proven or suspected deliberate radiation
poisoning, among these there is the case of a Soviet Secret Agent, Nikolai Khokhlov,
who, in 1954, gave himself up to U.S. authorities rather than carry out an
assassination in West Germany. He subsequently joined the emigrant Russian
revolutionary movement centred in West Germany. In 1957, while attending a
Frankfurt conference, he became sick with nausea, vomiting and fainting. Having
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