Ex-Spy's Poisoning Reads Like a Thriller

By PAISLEY DODDS
Associated Press Writer

It's a murder mystery filled with intrigue reminiscent of the Cold War - there's a retired Russian spy poisoned by a radioactive substance, a secret dossier, a slain investigative journalist and a shadowy fugitive billionaire.

But the story of the agonizing death of Alexander Litvinenko is an up-to-the-minute tale of politics, power and betrayal. And the final chapter of this spy thriller has not yet been written.

The most crucial questions remain unanswered: Was Litvinenko's death murder? Who killed him? Where did they get the poison?

Most intriguingly, who might have ordered his death?

The tale began after Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer, met with Mario Scaramella, an Italian security expert, in a London sushi bar Nov. 1. Scaramella passed Litvinenko a secret file purportedly showing that both men were on a hit list of Kremlin opponents.

Both men somehow ingested polonium-210, a substance normally produced in nuclear reactors.

Litvinenko fell ill and died, blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin. Scaramella was exposed to a smaller amount and showed no signs of illness, doctors said Saturday.

Investigators have found traces of radiation at least a dozen sites across London, including two British Airways jetliners. Litvinenko's wife was also contaminated with trace amounts of the poison, a friend said Friday, although she was not hospitalized.

Litvinenko told a reporter in June that a new Russian law would permit authorities to target its opponents abroad. He feared he was among them.

Another former Russian intelligence officer, Mikhail Trepashkin, wrote in a letter delivered Friday by human rights activists in Moscow that the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet KGB, had created a hit squad to kill Litvinenko and other Kremlin foes.

Trepashkin, who is serving a four-year sentence for divulging state secrets in a prison in Yekaterinburg, said he warned Litvinenko of the threat during a meeting in August 2002.

The Kremlin has dismissed the accusations as fantasy.

But the Guardian newspaper Friday reported that British intelligence sources suspect Litvinenko was the victim of a plot by "rogue elements" in the Russian state. Investigators suspect that several Russian agents may have entered Britain with a crowd of Moscow soccer fans shortly before Litvinenko met Scaramella, the newspaper reported.

Litvinenko's friends, meanwhile, have little doubt that Russian authorities were somehow involved.

"These latest developments only reinforce our thinking that it was the Russian government or some element of (Russia's) political landscape that was behind this," said Alex Goldfarb, Litvinenko's friend and spokesman.

Goldfarb and others suspect he was targeted because he was investigating the death of Anna Politkovskaya, a Kremlin critic shot to death in her apartment building in October.

This is not the first time the Kremlin has been accused of using drugs and poisons against critics. Suspicion fell on Russian authorities in 2004 when Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin.

That same year, Ivan Rybkin, a former speaker of the Russian parliament, disappeared during his race against Putin for the Russian presidency. He later said he had been drugged.

In each case, Moscow has denied the accusations.

The FSB, though, acknowledged that it killed Omar Ibn al-Khattab, a Saudi militant who fought with Chechen separatists, in 2002. Chechen rebels said he died after opening a poisoned letter slipped to him by the FSB.

Not everyone suspects the Kremlin in Litvinenko's death. Some of Putin's allies, in fact, say the poisoning may be the result of a falling out among the government's enemies.

According to this theory, the killer hoped to frame the Kremlin.

No one is naming any names. But Putin's supporters like to point out that Litvinenko's friend and sponsor was the fugitive Russian tycoon, Boris Berezovsky.

Berezovsky, a one-time Kremlin insider, is now a ferocious critic of the Russian president. Russia is seeking to extradite Berezovsky on fraud charges, but he was granted asylum in Britain in 2003.

"Litvinenko was moving in that community," said Bob Ayers, a security expert at the London think tank, Chatham House. "It seems to me to be a very dramatic way of achieving their aim of discrediting Putin's Russia."

Berezovsky set up the International Foundation for Civil Liberties, which Goldfarb directs. The wealthy Russian also paid for Litvinenko's house in North London.

Berezovsky paid to publish a book by Litvinenko, called "Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within," which alleged the FSB was behind a string of bombings at Russian apartment buildings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people and were blamed by the Kremlin on Chechen separatists.

Litvinenko broke with the FSB in 1998 when he announced publicly that he had refused to obey an order from his superiors to kill Berezovsky.

Another theory holds that associates of Berezovsky may have killed Litvinenko as part of some murky business dispute.

And some in Russia suggest Litvinenko may have been trying to deliver polonium-210 to Chechen rebels so they could build a conventional bomb that would spread deadly radiation.

They said Litvinenko met several times with Akhmed Zakayev, a representative of the late Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. Zakayev also lives in exile in London.

A senior European intelligence official told The Associated Press that "a government" must have been involved in the poisoning, because it would have been difficult for dissidents to get polonium-210.

"We have almost no doubt that it was not the Berezovsky clan," said the official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to reporters. "To get polonium of this grade - it's probably even beyond the Russian mafia - it has to come from a state."

No mystery is complete without a plot twist. In this tale, that is the curious case of Yegor Gaidar, Russia's former minister of economic development and also a critic of Putin.

Gaidar fell ill on a recent trip to Ireland, and his doctors in Russia suspect he was poisoned. He is recovering in a Moscow hospital.

Irish doctors investigating his illness have concluded he was not poisoned by a radioactive substance, said a health official speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy. However, they noted that his health had suffered sudden "radical changes," Gaidar's spokesman, Valery Natarov, said Saturday.

One of Gaidar's former bodyguards is Andrei Lugovoi, yet another retired FSB officer.

Lugovoi also met Litvinenko in London on Nov. 1 to discuss business. But Lugovoi suggested in an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant published Saturday that Litvinenko could have been poisoned weeks earlier than investigators believe.

Lugovoi said that he, a business partner and Litvinenko met in London on Oct. 17 in the office of Erinys UK Ltd., an international security and risk management company. Police have said that traces of radiation were found in the building that houses Erinys.

Erinys has confirmed that Litvinenko visited the office "on a matter totally unrelated to issues now being investigated by the police," but declined to elaborate. No staff have reported any ill effects, the statement said.

However, Zakayev - the Chechen in exile in London - insisted that Litvinenko was poisoned on Nov. 1. He said Litvinenko had driven in his car on Oct. 31, but investigators found no trace of radiation.