Before dying, ex-Russian spy accused Putin

Before dying, ex-Russian spy accused Putin
By Alan Cowell
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 24, 2006


LONDON: In a day that unfolded with the mystery and menace of a dark political thriller, the British authorities said Friday that Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian KGB officer and foe of the Kremlin, had died of radiation poisoning after he was hospitalized here.

The cause of his death was so unusual, so baffling and so chilling that a senior official called it "unprecedented." With echoes of the Cold War, the government called a high-level meeting restricted to the most senior ministers - code-named COBRA - and the Russian ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Office. A police inquiry was headed by an officer who normally deals with only the most serious cases of suspected terrorism.

The police said radioactive traces had been found at three London sites where Litvinenko had been, underscoring the highly unusual nature of the whole episode since he first complained of feeling unwell more than three weeks ago.

His family, moreover, issued what they said was his deathbed testament accusing President Vladimir Putin of Russia of "barbaric and ruthless" murder - a charge promptly rejected by the Russian leader. Litvinenko's father, Walter, also accused the Russian authorities of responsibility and said his 43-year-old son had been "killed by a little, tiny nuclear bomb."

It was not the first time that modern- day Russia had been suspected in a prominent poisoning in a foreign land. Doctors said that the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko - who campaigned in 2004 to move Ukraine away from Russian influence and forge closer ties with the European Union - was poisoned with dioxin when was running for office, leaving his face badly disfigured. Russia was suspected in that poisoning, among others, but the matter was never resolved.

Photographs of the dying Litvinenko showed him hairless and gaunt, wearing a green gown and lying in a hospital bed.

His slow and inexorable death was among the most bizarre since Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was murdered with a jab from a poison- tipped umbrella in 1978.

Word of a possible radiation attack, using what officials identified as a rare and highly radioactive isotope known as polonium 210, sounded alarms across London. "Spy Radiation: Major Alert," said a banner headline in The Evening Standard. But, inured to such scares by terrorism alerts, many Londoners seemed to shrug off the news.

Caroline Crawford, a lawyer visiting her sister in the hospital where Litvinenko died, for instance, said that she was not fazed by the news.

Since the bombings in London in July 2005, "you've just got to live with it," she said. "We live in a world where we can't control anything."

The police searched places where Litvinenko had been in early November - the Itsu sushi bar at Piccadilly Circus, his home in North London and the Mayfair Millennium Hotel near the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square - for radioactive traces. The authorities also said they were trying to find nurses and doctors who had treated Litvinenko since he began to complain of an unspecified illness on Nov. 1.

The police said radioactive traces had been found at both central London places and at Litvinenko's home in the white-collar Muswell Hill neighborhood. Television footage showed plain- clothes officers carrying away a metal box and several tote bags of evidence from the sushi bar.

But at the Millennium Hotel, where the lobby and bar were chock-full, the health and safety manager, Brian Kelly, played down the alarm.

"If we had a radiation problem here, do you think my restaurant and bar would be so full of people?" he said.

Roger Cox, director of the Health Protection Agency's center for radiation, chemicals and environmental hazards, said a large quantity of alpha radiation had been found in Litvinenko's urine. Referring to the effects of polonium 210, he said: "If that enters the body by ingestion, then it will rapidly track through the body and go to most major organs," causing "tissue damage characteristic of radiation."

It was not immediately known why it had taken so long for the source of Litvinenko's poisoning to become clear. The medical authorities denied earlier reports saying that Litvinenko had been poisoned by thallium, a toxic metal.

At a news conference, Dr. Pat Troop, the agency's chief executive, described Litvinenko's death as "an unprecedented event in the U.K. in that someone has apparently been poisoned by a type of radiation."

Polonium 210 is found naturally in low amounts in the human body and the environment, "but the only time it becomes dangerous is if you ingest it or breathe it in," said Dave Butler, a British radiation expert.

Litvinenko was a former operative in the KGB who became a colonel in its successor organization, known by its Russian initials as the FSB. In the late 1990s, he said publicly that he had been ordered to assassinate Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian tycoon, but had refused. He fled to Britain, and obtained British citizenship earlier this year. In 2003 he was the author of a book that accused the Russian secret service of orchestrating apartment house bombings in Russia in 1999 that led to the second Chechen war.

Since his illness became known last week, his friends have depicted his poisoning as an officially sanctioned reprisal for his criticism of the Kremlin and his efforts to investigate the fatal shooting in Moscow last month of Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist.

Before news broke of the radiation poisoning, Alex Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko's, read out to reporters what was described as his deathbed statement, addressed largely to Putin. "You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price," the statement read. "You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed."

"You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value," the statement went on. "May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people."

Litvinenko's death, announced late Thursday, threatened to build diplomatic strains between Britain and Russia, but Britain sought to avert a major crisis. A Foreign Office official, who spoke in return for customary anonymity, said the Russian ambassador to Britain, Yuri Fedotov, was called to the Foreign Office on Friday and told that "police were pursuing their investigations and the situation was now more serious." British officials wanted Russia to help the inquiry with any information they might have about the case, the official said.

Putin found himself on the defensive when he appeared in Helsinki following a meeting with leaders of the European Union, as he was when he traveled to Europe following the death of Politkovskaya.

He called Litvinenko's death a tragedy, but suggested that there was "no indication that it was a violent death," citing what he said was a British medical report. He called for an investigation and pledged the assistance of the Russian authorities.

"I hope that the British authorities will not contribute to the fanning up of political scandals having no real grounds," he said in remarks that were televised in Russia and given unusual prominence in state newscasts.

Putin also brushed aside the significance of Litvinenko's poisoning, suggesting his death was being used for political purposes.

"Those who did it are not the Lord and Litvinenko is not Lazarus," he went on. "It is regretful that even such tragic events as a death of a human being is being used for political provocations."

Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Moscow, and Sarah Lyall and Stephen Grey from London.