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| accessdate = 2006-01-26}}</ref> | accessdate = 2006-01-26}}</ref>

However, according to ], British officials insist there is no evidence of the involvement of the Russian government. According to the officials, the perpetrators were probably former Russian security agents, or members of a criminal gang linked to them."<ref>{{cite web
| title = Litvinenko affair: now the man who warned him poisoned too
| publisher = ]
| date = ] ]
| url = http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,1962354,00.html
| accessdate = 2006-12-02}}</ref>


On the same day, '']'' reported that the British government was preparing an extradition request asking that ] be returned to the UK to stand trial for Litvinenko's murder.<ref name=guardian.co.uk> ]. 26 January 2007</ref> On 22 May 2007 the ] called for the extradition of Russian citizen Andrei Lugovoi to the UK on charges of murder On the same day, '']'' reported that the British government was preparing an extradition request asking that ] be returned to the UK to stand trial for Litvinenko's murder.<ref name=guardian.co.uk> ]. 26 January 2007</ref> On 22 May 2007 the ] called for the extradition of Russian citizen Andrei Lugovoi to the UK on charges of murder

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Alexander Litvinenko
Александр Литвиненко
Born(1962-08-30)30 August 1962
Died23 November 2006(2006-11-23) (aged 44)
NationalityRussian
Espionage activity
AllegianceSoviet Union
Service branchKGB, FSB

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko (Template:Lang-ru) (30 August 1962 – 23 November 2006) was a former officer of the Russian State security service (FSB), and later a Russian whistle blower, dissident and writer.

Litvinenko worked in the Military Counter Intelligence. He was promoted to the Central Staff, and specialised in counter-terrorism and infiltration of organised crime. Six years later, he was promoted to senior operational officer and deputy head of the Seventh Section of the FSB.

Litvinenko was fired from the FSB following a 1998 press conference in which he and a number of other FSB officers alleged that they had been ordered to murder and kidnap a number of high-profile figures. Litvinenko was arrested the following March on charges of exceeding his authority at work. He was acquitted in November 1999 but re-arrested before the charges were again dismissed in 2000. A third criminal case began but he fled the country to the United Kingdom with his wife, where he was granted political asylum.

In 2002 he was convicted in absentia in Russia and given a three and a half year jail sentence.

During his time in London Litvinenko authored two books, "Blowing up Russia: Terror from within" and "Lubyanka Criminal Group," where he accused Russian secret services of staging Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts to bring Vladimir Putin to power. He also accused Vladimir Putin of ordering the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later from lethal poisoning by radioactive polonium-210. According to medical professionals, "Litvinenko’s murder represents an ominous landmark: the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism."

Early life

Alexander Litvinenko was born the son of physician Walter Litvinenko in the Russian city of Voronezh. He graduated from secondary school in 1980 in Nalchik and was then drafted into the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a Private. After a year of service, he matriculated in the Kirov Higher Command School in Vladikavkaz. After graduation in 1985, Litvinenko became a platoon commander in an Internal Troops regiment that guarded valuables in transit and in 1988 moved to the KGB.

Career

Soviet Union

Litvinenko joined the Dzerzhinsky Division of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was assigned to the 4th Company, where among his duties was the protection of valuable cargo. Litvinenko became an informant in 1986 when he was recruited by the MVD's KGB counterintelligence section. In 1988, he was officially transferred to the Third Chief Directorate of the KGB, Military Counter Intelligence. Later that year, after studying for a year at the Novosibirsk Military Counter Intelligence School, he became an operational officer and served in KGB military counterintelligence until 1991.

Russia

In 1991, he was promoted to the Central Staff of the MB-FSK-FSB of Russia, specialising in counter-terrorist activities and infiltration of organised crime. He was awarded the title of "MUR veteran" for operations conducted with the Moscow criminal investigation department, the MUR. Litvinenko also saw active military service in many of the so-called "hot spots" of the former USSR and Russia. During the First Chechen War Litvinenko planted several FSB agents in Chechnya. Litvinenko also served as a foot soldier during the disastrous Russian operation in the Dagestani village of Pervomayskoye, where two of his comrades were killed by friendly fire from the rocket artillery.

Livtinenko met Boris Berezovsky in 1994 when he took part in investigations into an assassination attempt on the oligarch. He later began to moonlight for Berezovsky where he was responsible for the oligarch's security. The moonlighting by Litvinenko and other security personnel was illegal, but the State somewhat tolerated it in order to retain personnel who were at the time underpaid. In 1997, Litvinenko was promoted to the FSB Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups, with the title of senior operational officer and deputy head of the Seventh Section. According to Dimitri Simes, the Directorate was viewed as much as a part of organised crime as it was of law enforcement. Litvinenko's moonlighting for the controversial businessman was not investigated, but often investigations in Russia were selective and often targetted only at those who had stepped out of line. Throughout his career he was not an 'intelligence agent' and did not deal with secrets beyond information on operations against organised criminal groups.

Alleged career in MI6

On 27 October 2007, the Daily Mail, citing "diplomatic and intelligence sources," stated that Mr Litvinenko was paid about £2,000 per month by the MI6 at the time of his murder. John Scarlett, the head of MI6, was allegedly personally involved in recruiting him.

Dissidence and insubordination

Criticism of FSB leadership

According to his widow Marina, during Litvinenko work in the FSB he discovered numerous connections between top brass of Russian law enforcement agencies and Russian mafia groups, such as Solntsevo gang. He wrote a memorandum about that to Boris Yeltsin. Berezovsky arranged a meeting for him with FSB director Barsukov and Deputy Director of Internal affairs Ovchinnikov to discuss the corruption problems; however, this had no effect. Litvinenko gradually realized that the entire system was corrupted from the top to the bottom.

In December 1997 he claimed he received an order to kill Berezovsky, but didn't inform is part-time employer until 20 March 1998. According to his widow, on 25 July 1998, the same day on which Vladimir Putin replaced Nikolai Kovalev as the Director of the Federal Security Service, Berezovsky introduced Litvinenko to Putin. He said: "Go see Putin. Make yourself known. See what a great guy we have installed, with your help." According to his widow, Litvinenko reported to Putin about corruption in the FSB, but Putin was unimpressed. Litvinenko said to his wife after the meeting: "I could see in his eyes that he hated me."

On 13 November 1998 in Kommersant, a newspaper which at the time he owned, Berezovsky wrote an open letter to Putin in which he accused Director of the Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups Major-General Yevgeny Khokholkov and his deputies of ordering his assassination. On 17 November 1998, five officers who were both in the employ of the FSB in the Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups and of Boris Berezovsky on a part-time basis, appeared together in a press conference at the Russian news agency Interfax. The five officers, including Litvinenko, repeated the allegation made by Berezovsky four days previous, but offered no evidence to support the accusations. The officers also claimed they were ordered to kill Mikhail Trepashkin and to kidnap a brother of the businessman Umar Dzhabrailov. Mikhail Trepashikin was present as a victim of the planned assassination. Several other FSB officers were also present to support the claims. On 23 May 2007, Sergey Dorenko, formerly a prominent Russian TV host, provided The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal with the full video tape of the interview of Alexander Litvinenko and his fellow employees of FSB recorded by him in April 1998, where the agents confessed that their bosses had ordered them to kill, kidnap or frame up prominent Russian politicians and businesspeople, and thus made it publicly available in full for the first time. Only some excerpts of the video had been shown in 1998.

Dismissal

Litvinenko was dismissed from the FSB, and then arrested twice on charges which were dropped after he had spent time in Moscow prisons. In 1999, he was arrested on charges of abusing duties. He was released a month later after signing a written undertaking not to leave the country.

Vladimir Putin said later in interview to Yelena Tregubova that he personally ordered the dismissal of Litvinenko: "I fired Litvinenko and disbanded his unit ...because FSB officers should not stage press conferences. This is not their job. And they should not make internal scandals public." Litvinenko also believed that Putin was behind his arrest. He said: "Putin had the power to decide whether to pass my file to the prosecutors or not. He always hated me. And there was a bonus for him: by throwing me to the wolves he distanced himself from Boris in the eyes of FSB's generals."

Flight

In October 2000, in violation of an order not to leave town, Litvinenko and his family travelled to Turkey, possibly via Ukraine. Whilst in Turkey, Litvinenko applied for asylum at the United States Embassy in Ankara, but his application was denied. Plater-Zyberk opined that the denial of application may have been based upon on the American opinion that Litvinenko's knowledge was of little benefit and that he may create problems. With the help of Alexander Goldfarb, Litvinenko bought air tickets for the Istanbul-London-Moscow flight, and asked for political asylum at Heathrow airport during the transit stop on 1 November 2000. Political asylum was granted on 14 May 2001, not because of his knowledge on intelligence matters, but rather on humanitarian grounds. In October 2006 he became a naturalised British citizen living in Whitehaven.

Conviction

In 2002 he was convicted in his absence in Russia and given a three and a half year jail sentence.

Allegations

This section may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. Please improve the article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

A report by the Conflict Studies Research Centre of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom described Litvinenko as a one-man disinformation bureau, who was at first guided by Berezovsky but later in pursuit of attention for himself. Henry Plater-Zyberk in the reports notes that Litvinenko made numerous accusations without presenting any evidence to give credence to his claims, and these claims which became increasingly outlandish, were often accepted by the British media without question.

Allegations against the Russian Government

Armenian parliament shooting

Main article: 1999 Armenian parliament shooting

Litvinenko accused the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General-Staff of the Russian armed forces had organised the 1999 Armenian parliament shooting that killed Prime Minister of Armenia Vazgen Sargsyan, ostensibly to derail the peace process which would have resolved the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but he offered no evidence to support the accusation. The Russian embassy in Armenia denied any such involvement, issuing the statement "in connection with recent press articles about the alleged involvement of the Russian special services in the tragic events at the Armenian parliament on 27 October 1999." It also described it as an attempt to harm relations between Armenia and Russia by people against the democratic reforms in Russia.

Russian apartment bombings

Main article: Russian apartment bombings

Litvinenko alleged that agents from the FSB coordinated the 1999 Russian apartment bombings that killed more than 300 people, whereas Russian officials blamed the explosions on Chechen separatists. This version of events was suggested earlier by David Satter, and Sergei Yushenkov, vice chairman of the Sergei Kovalev commission created by the Russian Parliament to investigate the bombings.

Moscow theatre hostage crisis

Main article: Moscow theatre hostage crisis

In a 2003 interview with the Australian SBS TV network, and aired on Dateline, Litvinenko claimed that two of the Chechen terrorists involved in the 2002 Moscow theatre siege — whom he named as "Abdul the Bloody" and "Abu Bakar" — were working for the FSB, and that the agency manipulated the rebels into staging the attack. Litvinenko said: "hen they tried to find among the dead terrorists, they weren't there. The FSB got its agents out. So the FSB agents among Chechens organized the whole thing on FSB orders, and those agents were released." This echoed similar claims made by Mikhail Trepashkin. The leading role of an FSB agent Khanpasha Terkibaev (the "Abu Bakar") was also described by by Anna Politkovskaya, Ivan Rybkin and Alexander Khinshtein. In the beginning of April 2003 Litvinenko gave "the Terkibaev file" to Sergei Yushenkov when he visited London, who in turn passed it to Anna Politkovskaya. A few days later Yushenkov was assassinated. Terkibaev was later killed in Chechnya. According to speaker of Russian State Duma Ivan Rybkin, "The authorities failed to keep Terkibaev out of public view, and that is why he was killed. I know how angry people were, because they knew Terkibaev had authorization from presidential administration."

Beslan school hostage crisis

Main article: Beslan school hostage crisis § Allegations_of_a_false_flag_operation_directed_by_the_Russian_government

Alexander Litvinenko suggested in September of 2004 that the Russian secret services must have been aware of the plot beforehand, and therefore that they must have themselves organized the attack as a false flag operation. He spoke in an interview before his death with Chechenpress news agency, and said that because of the fact that the hostage takers had previously been in FSB custody for committing terrorist attacks, it is inconceivable that they would have been released and still been able to carry out attacks independently. He said that they would only have been freed if they were of use to the FSB, and that even in the case that they were freed without being turned into FSB assets, they would be under a strict surveillance regime that would not have allowed them to carry out the Beslan attack unnoticed. Ella Kesayeva, co-chair of the group Voice of Beslan, formalized Litvinenko's argument in a November 2008 article in Novaya Gazeta, noting the large number of hostage takers who were in government custody not long before attacking the school, and coming to the same conclusion that Beslan was a false flag attack.

Support of terrorism worldwide by the KGB and FSB

Main article: Allegations of state terrorism by Russia

Litvinenko stated that "all the bloodiest terrorists of the world" were connected to FSB-KGB, including Carlos "The Jackal" Ramírez, Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Abdullah Öcalan, Wadie Haddad of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, George Hawi who led the Communist Party of Lebanon, Ezekias Papaioannou from Cyprus, Sean Garland from Ireland and many others." He says that all of them were trained, funded, and provided with weapons, explosives and counterfeit documents in order to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide and that each act of terrorism made by these people was carried out according to the task and under the rigid control of the KGB of the USSR. Litvinenko said that "the center of global terrorism is not in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or the Chechen Republic. The terrorism infection creeps away worldwide from the cabinets of the Lubyanka Square and the Kremlin".

Alleged Russia-al-Qaeda connection

In a July 2005 interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Litvinenko alleged that Ayman al-Zawahiri, a prominent leader of al-Qaeda, was trained for half of a year by the FSB in Dagestan in 1997 and called him "an old agent of the FSB" Litvinenko said that after this training, Ayman al-Zawahiri "was transferred to Afghanistan, where he had never been before and where, following the recommendation of his Lubyanka chiefs, he at once ... penetrated the milieu of bin Laden and soon became his assistant in al Qaeda." Former KGB officer and writer Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy supported this claim and said that Litvinenko "was responsible for securing the secrecy of Al-Zawahiri's arrival in Russia, who was trained by FSB instructors in Dagestan, Northern Caucasus, in 1996-1997" . He said: "At that time, Litvinenko was the Head of the Subdivision for Internationally Wanted Terrorists of the First Department of the Operative-Inquiry Directorate of the FSB Anti-Terrorist Department. He was ordered to undertake the delicate mission of securing Al-Zawahiri from unintentional disclosure by the Russian police. Though Al-Zawahiri had been brought to Russia by the FSB using a false passport, it was still possible for the police to learn about his arrival and report to Moscow for verification. Such a process could disclose Al-Zawahiri as an FSB collaborator. In order to prevent this, Litvinenko visited a group of the highly placed police officers to notify them in advance." According to FSB spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko, Ayman al-Zawahiri was arrested by Russian authorities in Dagestan in December 1996 and released in May 1997.

When asked in an interview who he thought the originator of the 2005 bombings in London was, Litvinenko responded saying "You know, I have spoken about it earlier and I shall say now, that I know only one organization, which has made terrorism the main tool of solving of political problems. It is the Russian special services."

He later said:

There is no doubt, that several years in the archives of Putin's special services we shall find out documents and we shall be convinced, that in July, 2005 secret agents of the FSB blew up innocent inhabitants of London in the underground and buses. And they blew them up executing the order of the person, who then at the summit of the G-8 was standing to the right of his "friend" Tony Blair and talking profusely about “double standards” in “the struggle against world terrorism”, demanding from him to give out for punishment his political opponents, who had found a refuge in the Great Britain.

On 1 September 2005, Al Qaeda members Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammad Sidique Khan claimed responsibility for the attacks on a video tape which aired on al-Jazeera.

Assassination of Anna Politkovskaya

Main article: Anna Politkovskaya assassination

Two weeks before his poisoning, Alexander Litvinenko accused Vladimir Putin of ordering the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and stated that a former presidential candidate Irina Hakamada warned Politkovskaya about threats to her life coming from Russian president. Litvinenko advised Politkovskaya to escape from Russia immediately. Hakamada denied her involvement in passing any specific threats, and said that she warned Politkovskaya only in general terms more than a year ago. It remains unclear if Litvinenko referred to an earlier statement made by Boris Berezovsky who claimed that former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Boris Nemtsov received a word from Hakamada that Putin threatened her and like-minded colleagues in person. According to Berezovsky, Putin uttered that Hakamada and her colleagues "will take in the head immediately, literally, not figuratively" if they "open the mouth" about the Russian apartment bombings.

Other

In his book Gang from Lubyanka, Litvinenko alleged that Vladimir Putin during his time at the FSB was personally involved in protecting the drug trafficing from Afganistan organized by Abdul Rashid Dostum. In December 2003 Russian authorities confiscated over 4000 copies of the book.

Litvinenko commented on a new law that "Russia has the right to carry out preemptive strikes on militant bases abroad" and explained that these "preemptive strikes may involve anything, except nuclear weapons," Litvinenko said that "You know who they mean when they say 'terrorist bases abroad'? They mean us, Zakayev and Boris, and me.". He also said that "It was considered in our service that poison is an easier weapon than a pistol." He referred to a secret laboratory in Moscow that still continues development of deadly poisons, according to him.

In an article written by Litvinenko in July 2006, and published online on Zakayev's Chechenpress website, he claimed that Vladimir Putin is a paedophile. Litvinenko also claimed that Anatoly Trofimov and Artyom Borovik knew of the alleged paedophilia. The claims have been called "wild", and "sensational and unsubstantiated" in the British media. Litvinenko made the allegation after Putin kissed a boy on his belly whilst stopping to chat with some tourists during a walk in the Kremlin grounds on 28 June 2006. The incident was recalled in a webcast organised by the BBC and Yandex, in which over 11,000 people asked Putin to explain the act, to which he responded, "He seemed very independent and serious... I wanted to cuddle him like a kitten and it came out in this gesture. He seemed so nice...There is nothing behind it." It has been suggested that the incident was a "clumsy attempt" to soften Putin's image in the lead-up the 32nd G8 Summit which was held in Saint Petersburg in July 2006.

Allegations concerning Romano Prodi

Main article: Italian Mitrokhin Commission

According to Litvinenko, FSB deputy chief, General Anatoly Trofimov said to him "Don’t go to Italy, there are many KGB agents among the politicians. Romano Prodi is our man there", meaning Romano Prodi, the Italian centre-left leader, former Prime Minister of Italy and former President of the European Commission. The conversation with Trofimov took place in 2000, after the Prodi-KGB scandal broke out in October 1999 due to information about Prodi provided by Vasili Mitrokhin.

In April 2006, a British Member of the European Parliament for London, Gerard Batten of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) demanded an inquiry into the allegations. According to Brussels-based newspaper, the EU Reporter on 3 April 2006, "another high-level source, a former KGB operative in London, has confirmed the story". On 26 April 2006, Batten repeated his call for a parliamentary inquiry, revealing that "former, senior members of the KGB are willing to testify in such an investigation, under the right conditions." He added, "It is not acceptable that this situation is unresolved, given the importance of Russia's relations with the European Union." On 22 January 2007, the BBC and ITV News released documents and video footage, from February 2006, in which Litvinenko repeated his statements about Prodi.

Shooting practice controversy

File:2686.vid-0008-l-.jpg
Russian task force Vityaz shooting at the image of Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko at University College Hospital

In January 2007, Polish newspaper Dziennik revealed that a target with a photo of Litvinenko on it was used for shooting practice by the Vityaz Training Centre in Balashikha in October 2002. The centre run by Sergey Lyusyuk is not affiliated with the government, and trains bodyguards, debt collectors and private security forces. In November 2006 the centre was used by the Vityaz for a qualification examination due to their own centre being under renovation. The targets, which Lyusyuk says were bought in the Olympic Market, were also photographed when the chairman of the Federation Council of Russia Sergei Mironov visited the centre and met Lyusyuk on 7 November 2006. When asked why the photographs of Mironov's visit were removed from the centre's website Lyusyuk said "Mironov didn't see those targets and knows nothing about them...(T)hose Poles are up to something."

Former FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin stated he warned in 2002 that an FSB unit was assigned to assassinate Litvinenko.

Illness and poisoning

Main articles: Alexander Litvinenko poisoning and Litvinenko assassination theories

On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised. His illness was later attributed to poisoning with radionuclide polonium-210 after the Health Protection Agency found significant amounts of the rare and highly toxic element in his body. In interviews, Litvinenko stated that he met with two former KGB agents early on the day he fell ill - Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, though they deny any wrongdoing. The men also introduced Litvinenko to a tall, thin man of central Asian appearance called 'Vladislav Sokolenko' who Lugovoi said was a business partner. Lugovoi is also a former bodyguard of Russian ex-prime minister Yegor Gaidar (who also suffered from a mysterious illness in November 2006). Later, he had lunch at Itsu, a sushi restaurant in Soho in London, with an Italian acquaintance and nuclear waste expert, Mario Scaramella, to whom he made the allegations regarding Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Scaramella, attached to the Mitrokhin Commission investigating KGB penetration of Italian politics, claimed to have information on the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, 48, a journalist who was killed at her Moscow apartment in October 2006.

An ex-KGB officer, who talked to the BBC, suspected that Litvinenko was running short of cash, and had no more KGB stories to tell, or sell. That may have led to him getting involved in a potentially deadly deal. "Litvinenko had no money," the ex-KGB officer said. "He needed to earn money. He couldn't write any more books because no-one would talk to him." Thus, Litvinenko's death was, according to the source, a settling of scores — business scores.

Marina Litvinenko, widow of the deceased, accused Moscow of orchestrating the murder. Though she believes the order did not come from Putin himself, she does believe it was done at the behest of the authorities, and announced that she will refuse to provide evidence to any Russian investigation out of fear that it would be misused or misrepresented.

Conversion to Islam

Two days before his death Litvinenko informed his father that he had converted to Islam. According to his father, Litvinenko had become increasingly disenchanted with the Russian Orthodox Church and had been contemplating conversion for "some time." Litvinenko's conversion to Islam and the related wish for Muslim funeral rites were recognized by his father. However, his widow, Marina, as well as his close friend (and press spokesman during his illness), Alexander Goldfarb, preferred a non-denominational ceremony. Goldfarb stated, "Unfortunately some people appeared and against the explicit wishes of the widow performed Muslim rites over the funeral. We had a choice to turn it into an unseemly situation, but Marina asked us to respect the memory of Alexander and let these people do what they did. Let God be their judge." Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, head of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, contended that Litvineko actually converted to Islam 10 days before he was poisoned.

Akhmed Zakayev, Foreign Minister of Chechen government-in-exile who lived next door to Mr Litvinenko and considered him "like a brother," said: "He was read to from the Qur'an the day before he died and had told his wife and family that he wanted to be buried in accordance with Muslim tradition."

Death and last statement

On 22 November, Litvinenko's medical staff at University College Hospital reported he had suffered a "major setback" due to either heart failure or an overnight heart attack. He died on 23 November, and Scotland Yard stated that inquiries into the circumstances of how Litvinenko became ill would continue.

On 24 November, a posthumous statement was released, in which Litvinenko directly accused Vladimir Putin of poisoning him. Litvinenko's friend Alex Goldfarb, who is also the chairman of Boris Berezovsky's Civil Liberties Fund, claimed Litvinenko had dictated it to him three days earlier. Andrei Nekrasov said his friend Litvinenko and Litvinenko's lawyer composed the statement in Russian on 21 November and translated it to English.

Putin disputed the authenticity of this note while attending a Russia-EU summit in Helsinki and claimed it was being used for political purposes. William Dunkerley, in a briefing from May 2007 for a round table which discussed Litvinenko's case and the way it was handled by the Russian and Western media, called into question the authenticity of the statement, noting that the statement did not read like a statement made on one's deathbed and was typed in English, a language which Litvinenko was far from proficient in, with the signature and date handwritten. Goldfarb later stated that Litvinenko instructed him to write a note "in good English" in which Putin was to be accused of his poisoning. Goldfarb also stated that he read the note to Litvinenko in English and Russian, to which he claims Litvinenko agreed "with every word of it" and signed it.

Grave of Alexander Litvinenko at Highgate Cemetery

His postmortem took place on 1 December at the Royal London Hospital's institute of pathology. It was attended by three physicians, including one chosen by the family and one from the Foreign Office. Litvinenko was buried at Highgate Cemetery in north London on 7 December. The police are treating his death as murder. On 25 November, two days after Litvinenko's death, an article attributed to him was published by The Mail on Sunday entitled "Why I believe Putin wanted me dead".

In an interview with the BBC broadcast on 16 December 2006, Yuri Shvets said that Litvinenko had created a 'due diligence' report investigating the activities of a senior Kremlin official on behalf of a British company looking to invest "dozens of millions of dollars" in a project in Russia. He said the dossier was so incriminating about the senior Kremlin official, who was not named, it was likely that Litvinenko was murdered out of spite. He alleged that Litvinenko had shown the dossier to another business associate, Andrei Lugovoi, who had worked for the KGB and later the FSB. Shvets alleged that Lugovoi is still an FSB informant and he had spread copies of the dossier to members of the spy service. He said he was interviewed about his allegations by Scotland Yard detectives investigating Litvinenko's murder. Shvets has also doubted Litvinenko's capacity to perform honest unbiased due diligence. The poisoning and consequent death of Litvinenko was not widely covered in the Russian news media.

Criminal investigation

On 20 January 2007 British police announced that they have "identified the man they believe poisoned Alexander Litvinenko. The suspected killer was captured on cameras at Heathrow as he flew into Britain to carry out the murder." The man in question was introduced to Litvinenko as 'Vladislav Sokolenko'. This name was an alias used by the killer as he had entered Britain using a fake EU passport. Because of the sloppy manner in which the polonium-210 was handled and left traces at several locations, it is very possible that Sokolenko is a Hamburg-based Chechen hitman known to the FSB as 'Pабочий' or 'Roustabout', named such because he previously worked on an oil rig and because of his willingness to move wherever work takes him.

As of 26 January 2007, British officials said police had solved the murder of Litvinenko. They discovered "a 'hot' teapot at London's Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing." In addition, a senior official said investigators had concluded the murder of Litvinenko was "a 'state-sponsored' assassination orchestrated by Russian security services." The police want to charge former Russian spy Andrei Lugovoi, who met with Litvinenko on 1 November 2006, the day officials believe the lethal dose of polonium-210 was administered.

However, according to the Guardian, British officials insist there is no evidence of the involvement of the Russian government. According to the officials, the perpetrators were probably former Russian security agents, or members of a criminal gang linked to them."

On the same day, The Guardian reported that the British government was preparing an extradition request asking that Andrei Lugovoi be returned to the UK to stand trial for Litvinenko's murder. On 22 May 2007 the Crown Prosecution Service called for the extradition of Russian citizen Andrei Lugovoi to the UK on charges of murder . Lugovoi dismissed the claims against him as "politically motivated" and said he did not kill Litvinenko.

Murder charges

A British police investigation resulted in several suspects for the murder, but in May 2007, the British Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, announced that his government would seek to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the chief suspect of the case, from Russia. On 28 May 2007, the British Foreign Office officially submitted a request to the Government of Russia for the extradition of Lugovoi to face criminal charges in the UK. On 5 July 2007, Russia officially declined to extradite Lugovoi, citing that extradition of citizens is not allowed under the Russian constitution. Russia has said that they could take on the case themselves if Britain provided evidence against Lugovoi but Britain has not handed over any evidence. The head of the investigating committee at the General Prosecutor's Office said Russia has not yet received any evidence from Britain on Lugovoi. "We have not received any evidence from London of Lugovoi's guilt, and those documents we have are full of blank spaces and contradictions. However the British ambassador to Russia, Anne Pringle, stated that London has already submitted sufficient evidence to extradite him to Britain.

See also

Subjects

People

References

  1. ^ "Alexander Litvinenko birth date". The Daily Telegraph. 2006-11-25. Retrieved 2006-11-25.
  2. ^ "Alexander Litvinenko obituary". The Independent. 2006-11-25. Retrieved 2006-01-19.
  3. Russia ready to cooperate with Britain on Litvinenko case - FSB RIA Novosti 2008-05-18
  4. ^ Alexander Litvinenko The Guardian Retrieved on 5 April 2008
  5. David Satter. Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State. Yale University Press. 2003. ISBN 0-300-09892-8.
  6. Alexander Litvinenko at the Frontline Club accusing Vladimir Putin of the assassination of journalist Anna Politkovskaya (In Russian and English)
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  96. Scaramella questioned in Rome over arms trafficking allegations Retrieved on March 29,2008
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