Strange Triple Suicide in UK

[Ed Jewett]

Britain: Strange Triple Suicide

March 18th, 2010 I have no idea what to make of this one.
Via: Times Online:
The mystery of three refugees who jumped to their deaths from a Glasgow tower block took a dramatic turn yesterday when it emerged that one of them had claimed to be a member of the Russian security services and went on to allege that he had uncovered a plot by the Canadian Government to assassinate the Queen.
Serge Serykh, 43, who, along with his wife and stepson, threw himself off a Glasgow tower block, was convinced that if he was not given asylum in Britain his life would be at risk. It is clear, as The Times has learnt, that Mr Serykh was suffering from severe mental health problems.
No deportation order to remove him from the UK had been issued by the authorities at the time he and his family embarked on their macabre triple suicide — although official sources said they had had their benefit payments removed last month and were facing eviction from their YMCA flat in the notorious Red Road complex on the day that they died.
Last night, as Strathclyde Police pieced together the mysterious tale of Mr Serykh, his blonde-haired wife, thought to be called Tatiana, and his 21-year-old stepson, sources told The Times of the bizarre background to a suicide pact that has shocked Scotland.
Mr Serykh had been given refugee status in Canada in 2000 and, in a plot that resembles an airport thriller, had offered his skills as an alleged former member of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to the Canadian Government, saying he had evidence of a foreign spy network across the country.
In November 2007 Canada rejected his application for citizenship and he immediately accused the authorities there of having used mind-altering psychotronic techniques against him.
He left Canada in late 2007 and went to several European countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, seeking asylum without success.
Shortly afterwards, he turned up in the UK and, having applied for asylum, he and his family at first stayed in Brent, North London before moving to Glasgow in autumn 2009. His case for asylum in the UK was based on his belief that because of an alleged deal between Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, and former President Putin of Russia, he would be killed by Canadian security agents if he was returned there. He still had a Canadian passport.
Those who had dealings with the Serykh family and have spoken to The Times say he was 90 per cent lucid and 10 per cent “off the wall”.
When the UK authorities rejected his application for asylum last year, on the ground that he still had refugee status in Canada, Mr Serykh approached three Glasgow solicitors, all experts in handling asylum issues, to take up his case, but they said they could not help him. He then sent a letter of appeal to the Queen and used it to repeat his fantasy that her life was at risk from the Canadian Government.
One senior source told The Times: “No removal order had been issued. They were not under imminent threat of deportation but their financial support of £35 a week each had been removed in mid February.
“However, they were going to be evicted from their home in the YMCA block in the Red Road on Sunday and they took their own lives”.
Reports yesterday suggested the family leapt from the balcony of their flat on Sunday morning either holding hands or joined together by a rope. They apparently used a wardrobe to break through the wire security mesh on the balcony. Last night, when police forensic science tents were removed, all that remained of the incident were three deep indentations in the turf where their bodies landed.
Residents said they knew little about the trio, and had barely seen them since they moved in about two months ago. Carol Craig, 51, who lives in the flat next door, said: “The police woke me at 10am to tell me the neighbours had jumped. I had only seen them on Saturday for the first time.”
Ms Craig thought they had been living in the flat for about two months. She described the woman as being in her late 30s or 40s.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Ed - good find. All is clearly not as it seems.

The kneejerk response of Brits to this story was one of apathetic sadness. Genuine political asylum seekers are typically treated terribly by the British immigration authorities, and the sight and smell of a Glasgow towerblock would be enough to drive anyone to the contemplation of suicide.

In November 2007 Canada rejected his application for citizenship and he immediately accused the authorities there of having used mind-altering psychotronic techniques against him.

"Mind-altering psychotronic techniques" - a most intriguing phrase.

Reports yesterday suggested the family leapt from the balcony of their flat on Sunday morning either holding hands or joined together by a rope.

The three were held together by a rope? I beg your pardon!!!

That's either insanely romantic or deeply sinister.... :trytofly:

[David Guyatt]

I can't imagine Canada setting out to kill the Queen. I mean, why would they bother. But Jan is right, the term "Mind-altering psychotronic techniques" is potentially very sinister.

[Jan Klimkowski]

I can't imagine Canada setting out to kill the Queen. I mean, why would they bother. But Jan is right, the term "Mind-altering psychotronic techniques" is potentially very sinister.

Indeed.

However, the belief that the Canadians are trying to kill the Queen would be an ideal screen memory to ensure that a programmed patsy would not be taken seriously if PC Plod accidentally stumbled upon him.

If it is a psychotronically-induced false or screen memory, the question is: what was implanted deeper in Serykh's mind?

[Ed Jewett]

The self-tying rope can be found on page 322
of the Acme Co. catalog.

[Magda Hassan]

Thanks for posting the story Ed. I had been meaning to as well. I haven't yet worked out where I stand on this but there are many points of interest. More information in article below including link to Litvenyenko death with knowledge of his death

How did jobless refugee who plunged to his death from flats afford £1,250-month flat in leafy Wembley? The MoS uncovers a reality that defies swift dismissal
It was an act of utter despair and, the assumption has been, madness. Last Tuesday, a family of three jumped from the balcony of their Glasgow tower block home and fell 200ft to their deaths.
On the face of it, it seemed a bleakly straightforward story: Sergei Serykh, who jumped along with his wife Tatiana and 20-year-old stepson, Stepan, was an asylum seeker at the end of his tether.
He had just learned that his application to remain in Britain had been declined. His benefits had been stopped and his asylum claims had been dismissed as the paranoid ramblings of a madman.
He said he had been a Russian secret agent. He claimed to have once uncovered a plot to assassinate the Queen. He said, among other things, that KGB operatives in Moscow would kill him and his family if they returned to his native Ukraine.
To the officials who dealt with the family in the months leading up to their deaths, Serykh's story seemed the stuff of fantasy and his suicide merely proof of escalating mental problems.
If the tragedy raised any questions at all it was simply how a mentally ill man could slip through two countries' asylum bureaucracy - he had first sought refuge in Canada - undiagnosed and untreated.
Certainly Serykh was a disturbed man. But whether he was stalked only by the creations of his paranoid mind, or pursued by altogether more corporeal enemies, is altogether less clear.
Because, while many have rejected his stories as fiction spun in desperation, The Mail on Sunday has investigated the man and his background and uncovered a reality that defies swift dismissal.


More...

• Asylum seeker who stabbed his friend to death on the loose after escaping from secure hospital
  

He may have met his end in the housing estate known locally as the United Nations of Hell - so called because of all the asylum seekers housed in Glasgow's grim Red Road flats - but when the 43-year-old arrived in Britain in 2007 he was far from an impoverished asylum seeker, dependent on food vouchers and state hand-outs.
Those who knew him recall him as a man with 'military bearing', always smartly dressed and softly spoken. And for much of their time in this country the family lived in middle-class comfort. He was clearly educated, though his English was broken in spite of years spent away from his native country.
Piecing together Serykh's early days in the former Soviet Union is difficult. We know that he was born in the Soviet city of Zaporozhe, which is now in the Ukraine, but details of his life are peculiarly sparse.
A soldier of his name served in the Russian army in the Pskov region close to the Estonian border from 1994 to 1996, which seems to support his claims of military service. But the circumstances surrounding his departure are obscure.
Then, in 2000, he turns up in Canada, in the sprawling Toronto suburb of North York. Serykh is listed as living there with Tatiana, 12 years his senior, her son Stepan and her daughter Karina Kriajeva, now 23.
'Passport': Sergei Serykh's Canadian refugee travel document

Canadian officials declined to comment on the case but our researches show that Serykh convinced the authorities, at least for a time, that he was indeed in potential danger from Russia.
In October 2005, the family was given 'protected person' status as defined by Canadian refugee laws. This means it was determined that, if they returned 'to their country of nationality or former habitual residence they would be subject to the possibility of torture, risk of life, or risk of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment'.
The most significant paperwork to emerge in the case of this self-declared Russian agent is Serykh's refugee 'passport', number RS014393, issued by the Canadian authorities on June 11, 2007.

It includes his childlike signature, the letters SeR inside a letter G, and on the document is written: 'This refugee travel document is valid for travel to all countries except Russia.'
This suggests the authorities accepted his assertion that he was fleeing some potential danger in Russia and that his earlier citizenship was Russian, even though his city of birth is in Ukraine.
The family was given permanent residency in Canada and to all intents and purposes they appeared settled. Stepan attended Newton Brook School and the family seemed happy in the area known as Little Moscow because of the large number of Russian immigrants there.
A friend recalls an eccentric household. Unusually, the family were Hindu, they practised yoga and holistic healing, were vegetarian and filled their home with Indian statuettes.
The friend said: 'They never worked but practised "psychological treatment". Mainly their clients were expats from Russia. Their son was a lovely boy.
'Then suddenly they just disappeared, telling no one.'
That perplexing departure followed the rejection of Serykh's application for Canadian citizenship and his insistence that his life was in danger. He would later claim he had uncovered a government plot to assassinate the Queen.
Well-appointed: The flat Sergei Serykh and his family rented in Wembley Park, London

After travelling briefly through Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, the family sought asylum in the UK. But when they arrived in this country, step-daughter Karina was no longer with them.
Today she lives in Moscow where she runs a rat-breeding business. She claims to have lost touch with her family three years ago when they left Canada. It is unclear whether she left at the same time or whether something happened earlier to distance her from them.
Asked yesterday about her stepfather's claims to being pursued by secret agents and his recent mental state, she said only: 'I don't want to talk about this. Some of it is true, some of it isn't.
'If the British authorities decide to send me urns with the ashes of my relatives, that would be just fine. If they decide to bury the bodies somewhere in Britain, I would be grateful if they showed me the place and some time later I can visit their graves. I don't need their bodies to be transported here.'
Intriguingly, she did not take the opportunity to deny any of her stepfather's claims. For 18 months until last October Serykh, Tatiana and Stepan rented an apartment in Wembley Park in North-West London.

They kitted it out with a 50in flatscreen TV, an XBox and Nintendo Wii, had two state of the art Samsung laptops and a printer and never struggled to meet the £1,250 monthly rent though Serykh appeared to have no job.

Grim end: Red Road flats in Glasgow, where Sergei Serykh and his family leapt to their deaths

Vitali Alexandrovich, Serykh's landlord, recalls a 'kind and erudite man' but one whose paranoia ultimately destroyed what friendship they had established and saw him leave London for Glasgow, apparently in fear of his life.

Mr Alexandrovich is uncertain how real a threat his former tenant faced from the secret services. Serykh certainly appeared disturbed to him but, tellingly, Mr Alexandrovich does not dismiss out of hand the fears he shared. He said: 'Sergei was not a typical refugee. His reasons for seeking asylum were certainly not financial. He wouldn't have cared that his benefits had been withdrawn. He seemed to have plenty of money.
'He said that since he defected from the Ukrainian secret services they were trying to assassinate him. He said he knew who had killed Alexander Litvinenko [the Russian dissident poisoned in London in 2006]. He said the Russian secret service were also after him, which is why he had fled to Canada in the first place.'
Willie Bain, the MP for North-East Glasgow who tried to help the family with their asylum application, said that three weeks ago he had counselled Serykh to resubmit his asylum application 'on more credible grounds' than the ones he had claimed.
Serykh asserted that a deal existed between Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, and former Russian president Vladimir Putin that meant he would be killed by Canadian security agents if he returned there.
Mr Bain said: 'He was insistent that he couldn't go back to Canada. I told them to submit a new application on more credible grounds.
'He was a very suave, charismatic individual and 95 per cent of the time he was very lucid and calm. The next minute he would come out with something that sounded like it was straight out of a spy book.'
For Mr Bain and many others, Serykh's 'spy book' tales were evidence of a loosening hold on reality. But what if they were not?
According to the MP, when dealing with Serykh 'it was extraordinarily difficult to separate fact from fiction'. Perhaps now it will never be possible to entirely separate the two.
But, however muddled they may have become in Serykh's troubled mind, it seems that even his most outlandish fictions may very well have had their basis in fact.

Additional reporting: Patricia Kane

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z0ia1quSte

[Magda Hassan]

More on the Litvenyenko angle here but please note the source is anti-Russian. Interestingly, it also says that neighbours thought there flat was being raided by unknown individuals which they assumed were police shortly before their deaths. Police deny they were there. But clearly some one else may have been.

Did the KGB kill a defected Russian spy and his family in Scotland?

Last update: 9 March 2010, 14:35
Publication time: 9 March 2010, 12:26

According to British media outlets, 3 Russian nationals - the 43-year-old FSB (KGB) Serykh, his wife, and a 20 year-old son - "fell out" to their death from their apartment on the 15th floor in a Glasgow tower block on Sunday, March 7.

According to their neighbors, there has been a raid by a group of unidentified individuals on their flat prior to the "falling out". The neighbors initially assumed that it had been a police raid but the police categorically deny it.

Earlier, the family of the KGB defector Serykh lived in Canada from November 2000 to November 2007 before travelling to London, where they applied for political asylum. According to the police, Serykh had made a series of interesting testimonies to the British police about the Canadian government.

The family of the KGB officer Serykh came to Glasgow last autumn. The KGB (FSB) officer's family was denied political asylum in Britain after Canada, but their allowance as refugees continued to be paid, and the police had nothing against their further staying in Britain.

They were not deported from Canada but Canadian authorities denied them citizenship, which is typical for Canada in similar cases, with an involvement of former FSB agents. They could always return to Canada, because they had a permanent residence there. That was the reason for the refusal to grant them the political asylum in Britain.

According to Glasgow police, the "falling out" is "a highly unusual case, which they previously had never to deal with".

The Russian media, which is now all under the control of the FSB, falsely reported that the British police considers this case as a suicide, but eventually the police does not think so, at least, while the investigation is under way.

Unlike the KGB media in Russia, the British press describes the murdered FSB officer Serykh and his family as "fall victims", but in no case as suicide victims.

The police did not disclose the full names of the "fallen" victims and waits until they contact close relatives of the "fallen" in order to inform them about the 3 deaths in Glasgow (see photo of police investigating traces on the balcony from which KGB officer and his family "fell").

Meanwhile, the Russian news agencies, without any references, rushed to announce that the father of family allegedly called Esa and he "was afraid of being deported to Russia"

The "fall victims" were tied with a rope. Before they became "fallen victims", a wardrobe had been thrown over the balcony to destroy a protective net intended to prevent suicides. The British press did not report how they managed to throw a heavy wardrobe from the balcony.

Meanwhile, The Times confirmed that Mr Serykh was a FSB officer and a defector who "fell out of the window". The newspaper writes:

"Sergei Serykh had been given refugee status in Canada in 2000 and, in a plot that resembles an airport thriller, had offered his skills as an alleged former member of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to the Canadian Government, saying he had evidence of a foreign spy network across the country".

He asked for political asylum in Britain in fear of being killed in Canada because of a "deal between Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, and the former Russian president Putin", the paper cautiously says, i.e. Sergei Serykh's case actually repeated the Litvinenko's one, when he exposed the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi as a FSB agent and was poisoned for that with polonium-210 by the KGB by Putin's order.

The defector Sergei Serykh had no problems in Canada from 2000 to 2006. However, in 2006 Stephen Joseph Harper, a former MP from Alberta, became the Prime Minister of Canada.

In 2007, the family Serykh had to flee.

It could be only assumed that Mr Serykh worked in the Canadian Department of the KGB and knew that Mr Harper could be a Russian agent. Similarly, Litvinenko knew that Romano Prodi were an agent of the KGB/FSB and was killed for that.

Mr Harper was born in 1959. In December 2008, he was awarded with a prestigious Jewish International Leadership Award for his support of "Israel" by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Department of Monitoring,
Kavkaz Center
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2010...1575.shtml

[Ed Jewett]

Thanks for posting the story Ed. I had been meaning to as well. I haven't yet worked out where I stand on this but there are many points of interest.

No, I hadn't done any analysis on the matter yet either.

I took this approach:

It was sufficiently interesting, bizarre and likely meaningful as to warrant posting it, with the knowledge that there are people here -- yourself included -- who are more veteran and worldly-wise than I who can figure it out and decide if it is meaningful, provides useful clues, is someone's disinformation, trap or 'bag job', and just precisely where it fits or belongs -- including in the trash. I won't be offended. I can't possibly know everything or see everything, but together we can.

Rein me in if that approach is dysfunctional.

I have often thought of -- and once or twice posted about -- the idea that we collectively ought to assemble or construct some taxonomy as to what constitutes material sufficient for posting. There are some obvious answers that are worth noting for the record, and there are many other answers that lie deeper that ought to be teased or evoked from hiding.

Such a dialogue will eventually save on band-width, administrative headaches and work, or flat-out contests of anger and dispute, hurt feelings, etc. We live in a varied spectrum, but at the ends, there are things that are clearly either black or white.

[Magda Hassan]

Rein me in if that approach is dysfunctional.

I have often thought of -- and once or twice posted about -- the idea that we collectively ought to assemble or construct some taxonomy as to what constitutes material sufficient for posting. There are some obvious answers that are worth noting for the record, and there are many other answers that lie deeper that ought to be teased or evoked from hiding.

Rein you in? Are you mad? Never! You find some great stuff around the place Ed and I don't want to stop that. I merely hadn't posted this because I haven't had the time not because I wasn't sure about it yet.
As for what constitutes the right material for posting anything one is not sure of or is way out there can go in 'Other' or 'Borderlands' But feel free to gather widely as much of it is fruitful:willy:

[David Guyatt]

The "fall victims" were tied with a rope. Before they became "fallen victims", a wardrobe had been thrown over the balcony to destroy a protective net intended to prevent suicides. The British press did not report how they managed to throw a heavy wardrobe from the balcony.

I'm willing to bet that a) suicides do not toss wardrobes out of high rise buildings to destroy protective "jump" nets, and b) that triple suicides are very, very rare, and c) triple suicides tying themselves together to jump are unheard of.

To my mind this smells like a punishment killing that included the wife and son.