The rivalry between two chess players in Russia took a bizarre turn when one of them was accused of poisoning the playing board with liquid mercury, causing her opponent to become ill.
The suspect, chess player Amina Abakarova, 40, was captured on surveillance footage taking something from her bag and then smearing a substance on a chessboard and table at the start of a tournament in the Russian city of Dagestan on August 2, the state media reported. Russia Today.
Abakarova then began playing against her opponent, 30-year-old Umayganat Osmanova, but Osmanova began to feel sick about 30 minutes into the match.
Osmanova, who had seen small silver beads on the table, felt nauseous and dizzy and had a metallic taste in her mouth.
“In the first few minutes I felt a lack of air and an iron taste in my mouth,” she said Russia Today. “I spent about five hours on this board. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t seen it before.”
Because she suddenly became ill, the chess officials called the emergency services. Later, doctors concluded that she had been poisoned by toxic fumes.
After the CCTV footage was viewed, Abakarova was arrested and interrogated by Russian authorities. She then confessed to removing liquid mercury from a thermometer and tampering with the chessboard to frighten Osmanova.
Their rivalry took a turn when the two chess players, who had known each other since they were children, got into a fight because Abakarova had broken the rules of the game by taking a mobile phone to a previous tournament.
Abakarova became upset when she heard that Osmanova was gossiping about the incident.
In addition to Osmanova, another player and a chess official also became ill from mercury exposure. Abakarova was later suspended by the Russian Chess Federation and could face a prison sentence for the poisoning.
In the long history of chess, this appears to be the first time anyone has poisoned a rival, Malcolm Pein, the English Chess Federation’s director of international chess, told The Telegraph.
“To my knowledge, this is the first recorded case in the history of chess where someone has used a toxic substance,” he said.
But this is hardly the first time that poison has been used to eliminate opponents in Russia. State agents have been accused of attempting to injure and kill perceived enemies of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and that’s without even mentioning the gruesome death of Grigory Rasputin.
Exposure to mercury, a potent neurotoxin, can cause people to feel like they’re going to throw up, along with tremors, headaches and dizziness. The metallic taste in your mouth that Osmanova had is another sign of mercury poisoning.
When it is in liquid form, people can get sick just by inhaling the fumes of the chemical, which is what seems to have happened to Osmanova.
Although Osmanova recovered quickly from her ordeal, prolonged exposure can lead to serious health problems and even death.
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