Alexander Litvinenko: Profile of murdered Russian spy - BBC News BBC News Alexander Litvinenko: Profile of murdered Russian spy 21 January 2016 Close share panel Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Alexander Litvinenko fell ill after a meeting with former KGB contacts in London in 2006 A public inquiry into the killing of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has concluded that President Putin probably approved his assassination. But who was he and why did his death cause such controversy? Former spy Alexander Litvinenko was killed in November 2006, leading to a clouding of relations between London and Moscow. The 43-year-old had been an officer with the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, but he fled to Britain where he became a fierce critic of the Kremlin. In his final years he also became a British citizen. After he was killed by radioactive polonium-210 , believed to have been administered in a cup of tea, it emerged the father-of-one was being paid by the British secret service MI6.

'Serious poisoning' It is alleged Mr Litvinenko was investigating Spanish links to the Russian mafia and had planned to fly to Spain with former agent Andrei Lugovoi - the main suspect over his murder. At a central London hotel on 1 November 2006, he took tea with Mr Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, who was also a former Russian agent. Mr Litvinenko fell ill soon afterwards and spent the night vomiting. Three days later he was admitted to Barnet General Hospital in north London, where his condition gradually became a cause for concern. On 11 November he was interviewed by the BBC Russian Service and said he was in "very bad shape" after a "serious poisoning". Image copyright AP Image caption Mr Litvinenko had moved to the UK in 2000 During that same interview, Mr Litvinenko - a critic of the Putin regime - said he had been looking into the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya , who had received death threats before being shot at her Moscow apartment block the previous month. On 17 November he was transferred to University College Hospital in London after his condition worsened.

He died six days later, with his wife Marina, father Walter, and son Anatoli at his bedside. His widow has said he blamed the Kremlin as he lay dying in hospital, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin was responsible for "everything that happened to him". Russia denies any involvement. Assassination plot claims Born in the city of Voronezh in 1962, Mr Litvinenko joined a military unit of the Soviet Union's interior ministry in 1980 and reportedly joined the KGB eight years later. He rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel when the KGB became the FSB in the 1990s. Mr Putin was his ultimate boss at the FSB but they reportedly fell out over corruption within the FSB. In 1998, Mr Litvinenko was arrested on charges of abusing his office after exposing an alleged plot to assassinate Boris Berezovsky, the Russian tycoon who was found dead at his Ascot home in March 2013. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Police investigating the poisoning sealed off several premises, including this Itsu restaurant, for a period afterwards He spent nine months in a remand centre before being acquitted.

After leaving the service Mr Litvinenko wrote a book, Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, in which he claimed FSB agents had been responsible for the bombing of apartment blocks in Moscow and two other cities in 1999. The bombings were blamed on Chechen separatists and his book claimed they were used as a pretext for the second Russian invasion of Chechnya. Mr Litvinenko fled to the UK in 2000, claiming persecution, and was granted asylum. He is understood to have taken British citizenship in 2006. After his death, suspicion fell on Mr Lugovoi and Mr Kovtun, the two Russians he had met for tea at the Millennium Hotel. The inquiry into Mr Litvinenko's death heard that he may have also been poisoned with polonium in the October before he died, at an earlier meeting with the suspects at a private security firm in Mayfair, central London.

The Litvinenko case 23 Nov 2006 - Litvinenko dies three weeks after having tea with former agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun in London 24 Nov 2006 - His death is attributed to polonium-210 22 May 2007 - Britain's director of public prosecutions decides Mr Lugovoi should be charged with the murder of Mr Litvinenko 31 May 2007 - Mr Lugovoi denies any involvement in his death but says Mr Litvinenko was a British spy 5 Jul 2007 - Russia officially refuses to extradite Mr Lugovoi, saying its constitution does not allow it May-June 2013 - Inquest into Mr Litvinenko's death delayed as coroner decides a public inquiry would be preferable, as it would be able to hear some evidence in secret July 2013 - Ministers rule out public inquiry Jan 2014 - Marina Litvinenko in High Court fight to force a public inquiry 11 Feb 2014 - High Court says the Home Office had been wrong to rule out an inquiry before the outcome of an inquest July 

2014 - Public inquiry announced by Home Office January 2015 - Public inquiry begins Home Office forensic pathologist Dr Nathaniel Cary said the post-mortem examination carried out on Mr Litvinenko's body had been correctly described as the "most dangerous...

ever undertaken in the Western world". He and his colleagues had to wear white suits, protective gloves and specialised hoods with air pumped into them through a filter during the process. Results of that examination suggested Mr Litvinenko had died after being poisoned with the radioactive substance polonium-210 . A frantic police investigation led to a number of premises being briefly sealed off while forensic scientists tested for traces of the radioactive material. Locations which tested positive included the Millennium Hotel, the Abracadabra lap-dancing club and the Emirates football stadium, where Mr Lugovoi had watched Arsenal play CSKA Moscow. It also emerged he had met Italian academic Mario Scaramella at an Itsu sushi restaurant in central London, where he is said to have received documents about the death of Mrs Politkovskaya, a long-term critic of the FSB. Traces were also found on two planes at Heathrow Airport, at the British embassy in Moscow and at a flat in Hamburg, Germany, linked to Mr Kovtun. Around 700 people had to be tested for radioactive poisoning but none of them was seriously ill.

Extradition denied After a two-month investigation, Scotland Yard detectives handed over a file to the then director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, who announced in May 2007 that he was recommending Mr Lugovoi be charged with murder. Mr Lugovoi and Mr Kovtun both denied any responsibility for the death. At a news conference in Moscow, Mr Lugovoi repeatedly stressed his innocence and claimed Mr Litvinenko was a British spy who might have been killed by the British security services. The office of the prosecutor general in Moscow was quick to declare that Mr Lugovoi could not and would not be extradited because the constitution prevented the extradition of Russian citizens. In July 2007, British-Russian tensions turned into an ugly spat with four Russian and four British diplomats expelled from their respective embassies. The UK broke off links with the Russian security services - although there was limited contact during the Sochi Winter Olympics. Image copyright AP Image caption Andrei Lugovoi has denied any involvement and has accused the British security services After a hard-fought legal battle by Mrs Litvinenko, a public inquiry took place.

The British government had originally rejected the idea of an inquiry, suggested by the coroner in charge of the case, Sir Robert Owen. He had argued this was the only way of considering secret material that the government had demanded be kept out of the inquest. The material can be considered in closed session during an inquiry but not during an inquest - this includes material pointing to a possible role of the Russian state in the killing. The inquiry, set up by the government , opened at the Royal Courts of Justice in London in January 2015, led by Sir Robert. A year later, on 21 January, it reported its conclusion that Mr Litvinenko's murder was "probably" approved by President Putin. Mrs Litvinenko said: "The words my husband spoke on his deathbed when he accused Mr Putin have been proved by an English court." But the Russian government said the case had been "politicised" and had "overshadowed" relations between Russia and the UK.

Putin likely OK'd Alexander Litvinenko death, inquiry says - CNN.com Report: Putin likely approved ex-spy's slaying 04:54 Story highlights "Putin himself personally protected (poisoning suspect) Lugovoi," Litvinenko's widow tells CNN Russia's Foreign Ministry calls the inquiry politically motivated; Russia's ambassador goes to the UK Foreign Office Russian President Vladimir Putin "probably approved" operation by Russian agents to kill Litvinenko, UK inquiry concludes London (CNN) Russian President Vladimir Putin probably approved the operation by Russian agents to kill former FSB spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, a detailed UK inquiry has concluded. Retired High Court Judge Robert Owen, who conducted the inquiry, wrote that he was "sure" that two former Russian agents poisoned the 44-year-old at a London hotel with highly radioactive polonium-210. And Owen wrote that he was also sure that the two men who allegedly poisoned Litvinenko -- former KGB and FSB employee Andrei Lugovoi and former Russian army officer Dmitri Kovtun -- were acting on behalf of others, probably the Russian spy service, the FSB. "The FSB operation to kill Mr.

Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr. Patrushev and also by President Putin," Owen wrote. Nikolai Patrushev was head of the FSB in 2006. Photos: Critics of Putin Photos: Critics of Putin Former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned by a lethal dose of radioactive polonium, his tea spiked during a meeting with two former Russian security servicemen. He had said the Russian Federal Security Service orchestrated a series of bombings in Russia in 1999 that left hundreds dead and led to Russia's invasion of Chechnya later that year. Hide Caption 7 of 8 Photos: Critics of Putin Russian human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, left, represented the family of a Chechen woman killed by a former Russian colonel in March 2000. He was shot in 2009. The gunman also killed Anastasia Baburova, right, who may have been trying to intervene. Hide Caption 8 of 8 In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the UK inquiry as politically motivated. "We regret that a purely criminal case has been politicized and has darkened the general atmosphere of our bilateral relations," spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday.

Read More UK Home Secretary Theresa May told Parliament on Thursday that Interpol notices and European arrest warrants were in place so that the main suspects would be arrested if they traveled abroad. And at the request of Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, Russian Ambassador Alexander Vladimirovich Yakovenko was summoned to the UK Foreign Office to meet with David Lidington, the minister responsible for Russia. "The Minister set out the UK Government's deep concern regarding the findings of the independent Litvinenko Inquiry report," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said. "He made clear that the inquiry's conclusion concerning the Russian State's probable involvement in this murder was deeply disturbing, demonstrating a flagrant disregard for UK law, international law and standards of conduct, and the safety of UK citizens. The Minister said that this would further complicate bilateral relations, undermine trust, and damage Russia's reputation internationally." Lidington stressed that it was unacceptable for Russia to fail to honor a formal request to extradite Lugovoi. The findings related to Putin -- even if his involvement is viewed as probable rather than definitively proved -- will offer some comfort to Litvinenko's widow, Marina. She said outside the High Court on Thursday she was "pleased that the words my husband spoke on his deathbed when he accused Mr.

Putin of his murder have been proved true in an English court." In an interview later in the day with CNN, she accused Putin of direct involvement. "Putin himself personally protected Lugovoi. He himself," she said. "He provided his immunity. ... He protected him. He grant him to be a member of parliament. It means he took all this responsibility." Who was Alexander Litvinenko? Litvinenko was a former Russian security agent who came to Britain in 2000 after turning whistleblower on the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, the former Soviet secret police and intelligence agency. (FSB stands for its name in Russian, Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopastnosti, which translates as Federal Security Service .) According to his wife, he then started working for Britain's security services. Read more: Litvinenko isn't the first or last Putin critic to end up dead "My husband was killed by agents of the Russian state in the first-ever act of nuclear terrorism on the streets of London," Marina Litvinenko said. "This could not have happened without knowledge or consent of Mr. Putin." On Thursday, she added: "Now it is time for (British Prime Minister) David Cameron .

I am calling immediately for the expulsion from the UK of all Russian intelligence operatives, whether from the FSB or for other Russian agencies based in the London Embassy. "I'm also calling for the imposing of targeted economic sanctions and travel bans against named individuals, including Mr. Putin." CNN's Michael Martinez and Nic Robertson contributed to this report. Alexander Litvinenko inquiry: Timeline of the poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko inquiry: Timeline of the poisoning of former Russian spy Lydia Smith Britain does U-Turn on Ex-KGB Litvinenko Murder Inquiry More Nearly a decade after Alexander Litvinenko's fatal poisoning sparked one of the UK's most intriguing murder investigations, a report on an independent inquiry into his death is set to be published. The conclusions of the report, led by Sir Robert Owen, will be released on 21 January and will outline "appropriate recommendations" in response to Litvinenko's death. The former KGB agent died in November 2006 at the age of 43 after drinking tea laced with deadly polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope made only at closed nuclear facilities controlled by Russia. The ex-Russian spy fled to the UK where he became a fierce critic of the Kremlin.

He was working for the British secret service when he was poisoned, after meeting two Russian contacts, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, in the Millennium Hotel in London. Litvinenko's death sparked debate over who was responsible and led to a political row between Britain and Russia, which resulted in the expulsion of diplomats from both sides. Ahead of the inquiry findings, here are the key events before and after the poisoning. 1 November 2006 Litvinenko meets Lugovoi, deputy of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament for the political party LDPR, and Kovtun, an ex-KGB agent, at the Pine Bar in London's Millennium Hotel. He also met Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic, at an Itsu sushi bar in central London, where he is believed to have received documents about the death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed at her Moscow apartment in October 2006. Litvinenko falls ill and is admitted to Barnet General Hospital in north London three days later. He is later moved to University College Hospital as his condition deteriorates and is placed under police guard.

View photos Russian businessman and former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi More 20 November 2006 Pictures are released showing Litvinenko with dramatic hair and weight loss. Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism unit takes over the investigation into his illness. The Kremlin dismisses allegations that the Russian government deliberately poisoned Litvinenko as "nonsense". 23 November 2006 Litvinenko dies in intensive care, one day after suffering a heart attack. Russia's foreign intelligence service denies involvement in his apparent poisoning. 24 November 2006 A friend of Litvinenko, Alex Goldfarb, reads out a statement made by Litvinenko before he passes away, in which he accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of involvement in his death. Speaking at a press conference, Putin says Litvinenko's death was a tragedy but there was no proof it was a "violent death". Reports emerge that Litvinenko was killed with radioactive element polonium-210. Radioactive traces are found at the hotel and sushi bar he has previously visited, as well as at his home in north London. The polonium-210 is believed to have been administered in a cup of green tea drank by Litvinenko.

Polonium poisoning Polonium-210 is highly radioactive and requires direct contact with human inner tissue to be lethal. The quantities needed to kill are minute and effects of acute poisoning include damage to the liver, as well as sickness and diarrhoea. A speck of polonium the size of the full point at the end of this sentence contains around 3,400 times the lethal dose for humans. The chemical element was discovered by Marie Curie in 1898 and is named after the scientist's native country, Poland. Polonium emits alpha particles not gamma energy, so would not be picked up at an airport scanner. 30 November 2006 An inquest into the Litvinenko's death is opened and adjourned at a London court. A day later, Scaramella, who met Litvinenko at the sushi bar, tests positive for a significant amount of polonium-210 – but he has not experienced symptoms of poisoning. Marina Litvinenko, the wife of the former KGB agent, also tests positive for the substance but she is not believed to be in danger.

5 December 2006 Russia's prosecutor general, Yuri Chaika, says he will not extradite suspects in the poisoning of Litvinenko to the UK. He says a trial of a Russian citizen must take place in Russia. Prosecutors in Russia say they intend to question former KGB bodyguard Lugovoi. British police state later say they are treating the death of Litvinenko as murder. 9 December 2006 German police say they have found evidence of radiation in Hamburg properties allegedly used by Kovtun. Traces of radiation were reported found in the flat of his ex-wife and at her mother's home outside the city. No radiation had been found in Kovtun's own flat, which is in the same apartment block. In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Marina Litvinenko says she believes Russian authorities may have been involved with her husband's murder but says Putin was not involved. 16 December 2006 Yuri Shvets, a former major in the KGB during 1980 to 1990, claims Litvinenko was murdered because he had information on a high-ranking Kremlin figure.

In an interview with the BBC, Shvets said he and Litvinenko had compiled a report investigating the activities of senior Kremlin officials on behalf of a British company looking to invest millions of dollars in a project in Russia. View photos The Nuking of Alexander Litvinenko by -- Antiwar.com Share This Four major political assassinations with international implications in the past year, three in the last month or so: Rafik Hariri and Pierre Gemayel in Lebanon, and two Russians, Anna Politkovskaya , a journalist, and former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko . Is it just a passing fad, or is somebody trying to tell us something? These murders are remarkably similar, not merely in that they were all politically motivated, but also in the journalistic narrative subsequently woven around them. The story line is simple and straightforward: in each case, the long arm of an evil dictator struck down internal critics. Four murders and two culprits  Syria and Russia. Two countries that, with the transfer of Russian missiles to Damascus, have entered a de facto military alliance and maintain good relations with Iran . Both have been singled out as prime candidates for regime change , at least as far as the unrepentant neoconservatives are concerned.

Since the president’s infamous “ axis of evil ” speech, the axis has expanded beyond the original Iran-Iraq-North Korea trio to include Cuba, Syria, and Libya (the latter has since come in from the cold). And the expansion continues, with the latest candidate for axis-of-evildom being Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The regime-changers have it in for Putin for a number of reasons, including the politics of energy and oil (Russia has the world’s biggest natural gas reserves and the eighth-largest oil reserves), the politics of the Middle East (Putin’s coziness with Tehran and Damascus), and the politics of pure power (Russia is big, nuclear-armed, and under Putin pursues an independent foreign policy). In any case, the diplomatic and journalistic offensive against the Kremlin has been underway for some time, with the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and now the macabre poisoning of Litvinenko giving the Russophobes plenty of rope with which to hang Putin, whom they now liken to Stalin. The British media has been aflame with the fiery accusations not only of the victim, but also of Boris Berezovsky , the Russian oligarch who sponsored and supported Litvinenko in exile: both pin the blame squarely on the Russian president.

However, on Saturday the Independent newspaper fairly summed up the conventional wisdom as it is evolving: “Most believe the theory is implausible: if the Kremlin wanted to kill Litvinenko, why attract world-wide publicity? A quiet bullet would have been equally effective.” Why indeed. And why, pray tell, choose a highly unusual method of offing their target  with polonium-210 , a highly radioactive and very rare metal, which is likely to have been produced in tandem with a sophisticated technical and scientific apparatus associated with a state sponsor? The Kremlin might just as well have left its calling card. Yet the hysterical lynch-mob mentality that is now crying out for Putin’s blood is completely illogical, given a moment’s reflection, for a good number of reasons.

To begin with, Litvinenko’s own deathbed statement to the contrary, there is no good reason why the KGB would target someone whose wild accusations are no more credible than our own prophets of the “ 9/11 Truth movement .” Here, after all, is a Russian convert to Islam who has accused the Russian security services, specifically the FSB, of bombing Russian cities in an elaborate plot to justify the war on Chechnya and generate political support for Putin’s domestic policies. He also claimed that the Russians were behind al-Qaeda and the Beslan massacre: he was sure the KGB trained and funded Ayman al-Zawahiri. He accused Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi of being a Soviet agent, and even went so far as to announce that Putin is a pedophile . Lacking a certain credibility, Litvinenko’s foam-flecked screeching never had much of an audience inside Russia. Why would the KGB bother with this kook?

To posit that they would risk a long, drawn-out martyrdom, acted out in front of the international media, complete with drama queen Litvinenko waffling on about how he heard the beating of “ the wings of the angel of death drawing near ”  it just doesn’t compute. Yet the media narrative we are being spoon-fed  particularly by the British tabloid press  is blithely indifferent to such old-fashioned values as logic and facts. The Telegraph is typical, with endless pieces detailing the entire sordid history of the KGB, replete with past poisoning incidents and well-larded with quotes from Berezovsky and his various sock-puppets voicing their certainty that the Kremlin was behind the killing. Yet even the Russophobic Telegraph has to admit  after listing all the possible reasons to point the accusing finger at Russia  that, as their Whitehall source put it: “We are at a very early stage in the investigation and to date there is not a single piece of evidence that points directly to the Russians, so we have to keep an open mind.” Yeah, but not too open.

The Times of London has been particularly outraged, devoting at least one editorial to deploring this apparent invasion of central London by Russian “terrorism”  and the rest of the right-wing media, in lockstep with the leftist Guardian and the Labor government, is marching to the same tune. In the U.S., the hysteria is even shriller, with David Pryce-Jones at National Review announcing: “The murder reveals that the Soviet Union is arising, vampire-like, from its grave.” The anti-Semitic wackos over at PrisonPlanet.com, a Web site run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, agree : “Alexander Litvinenko’s poisoning is, as we are led to believe by a small cadre of prominent Internet bloggers and their cheerleaders, some kind of elaborate set-up on behalf of Zionists and Neo-Cons to drag Putin’s name through the mud, then why do today’s major Israeli newspapers carry scant mention of the former spy’s death? “Apologists for Putin have attempted to weave a yarn that somehow suggests Litvinenko was knowingly poisoned by Zionist or Neo-Con agents in order to make it appear as if Putin was the culprit.

“If this was the case then we’d expect to see the biggest Neo-Con and Zionist media fronts in Israel, the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz, to be wallowing in coverage of the former spy’s death in a London hospital last night. “Yet both the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz chose to bury the story near the bottom of their websites, even as it was the top story at Reuters and BBC News.” According to the twisted worldview of those who inhabit the latter-day Jonestown of “Prison Planet,” the entire Israeli media is in the hip pockets of the neoconservatives, which, as we all know  not!  is just a polite euphemism for Jews. If they didn’t pay sufficient attention to the Litvinenko brouhaha, then that proves  what? Well, it proves exactly zilch, but try telling that to these deluded Jonestowners.

Litvinenko sought, without much success, to implant the methodology of the “9/11 Truthers” in Russian soil, writing that the bombings of several apartment buildings in Russia during the 1990s were government-directed “psy-ops” schemes designed to provoke war with Chechnya and give Putin a free hand inside Russia. The Beslan massacre, according to both Litvinenko and Jones, was “staged” by the Russians: and those poor little innocent Chechens, normally as gentle as lambs, were scapegoated by a mad and murderous tsar. Oleg Sultanov , a Russian journalist who infiltrated Berezovsky’s network-in-exile, was commissioned by the oligarch to write a book on Putin’s Russia, with the one requirement that it must be “as scary as possible.” Says Sultanov : “‘It was meant to be some kind of “foundation study” of the horrors of contemporary Russia and the criminal role of the special services,’ Sultanov recalled.

‘After all, that is the core of Berezovsky’s theory: the special services, and Putin the former KGB agent, are responsible for everything that’s happening in Russia  all the contract murders, terrorist attacks, frauds. “‘First there was the documentary: An Assault On Russia; then the book by Litvinenko the defector; the next link in this chain was meant to be my “epic,”‘ he said. ‘Alex Goldfarb, Berezovsky’s closest ally, admitted the Litvinenko books were a flop. So it’s urgently necessary to create some hot new reading material which would prove that “our cause is just” and Putin is the enemy of the human race.'” Does anybody really believe this malarkey? Well, our own nutballs apparently do , along with much of what passes for the “mainstream” media  but the Russian people no. That doesn’t matter, however, as the Russians aren’t the intended audience for this propaganda barrage: it is Western public opinion that is being mobilized against the Russkies in an attempt to rekindle the Cold War.

The latest stunt of the Russophobes is to demonize Putin as a mad poisoner, and it is unfortunately succeeding. Make no mistake: this incident represents the gravest threat. After all, if someone could smuggle this stuff into Britain and carry out an assassination, then why not al-Qaeda? To add an extra layer of spookiness over the whole affair, we are simultaneously hearing predictions of a nuclear attack on Britain to be mounted by al-Qaeda. Which is why the COBRA anti-terrorist committee of the British cabinet dealt directly with the problem as soon as it became apparent that Litvinenko had been effectively nuked. Given the technical details , the likelihood increases that this is a case of state-sponsored terrorism, one made all the more ominous by the use of radioactive materials. The question now is: which state? Everyone is assuming the Russians did it, but this is counterintuitive for all the reasons given above and yet more. After all, are the Russophobes really saying that Putin has launched what amounts to a small-scale nuclear attack on British soil, targeting a British citizen? (Litvinenko was granted citizenship just a month prior to his death).

That strains credulity to the breaking point, and raises the question: well, then, who killed Litvinenko? There are several alternative theories  alternatives, that is, to the War Party’s “Putin did it” mantra  which I’ll list in descending order in terms of credibility, with the least likely scenarios first: 1) A rogue element of Russian intelligence, or some other part of the military-security apparatus, did it , either out of revenge or as part of a struggle for power among Putin’s subordinates. The problems with this theory are, (a) there is no evidence for it, and (b) it is unlikely such a plot would go undetected by the Russians for very long. The assassination of Litvinenko in such a spectacular manner would benefit no one except those who seek to undermine Putin’s legacy and his chosen successors. This leaves open the possibility, however, that those who have not been chosen might be sufficiently PO’d to create an incident  although one can hardly believe they would damage the interests of their own country to such an extreme degree. 2) Litvinenko committed suicide as a final gesture of enmity directed at his old enemy.

This possibility is being actively investigated, prompted by “increasing concerns over the reliability of the Russian dissident’s death-bed testimony.” One can certainly understand why authorities take Litvinenko’s own statements with a very large grain of salt, yet, from what I can glean about Litvinenko’s personality, suicide seems unlikely. So convinced was this marginal figure of his own importance that one doubts he would end a life he considered so uniquely valuable. In his own mind he was a major figure in a historic struggle: Litvinenko had an ego as big as all the Russias. People like that never kill themselves: they’re much too attached to their own skin. 3) The trio of Andrei Lugovoi , Dmitri Kovtun , and Vyacheslav Sokolenko , who met with Litvinenko hours before he fell ill, are surely prime suspects, although all vehemently deny having anything to do with the assassination. While Kovtun seems like an ordinary businessman, and I couldn’t track down anything on Sokolenko, Lugovoi is quite a character: an ex-KGB officer and former bodyguard to Yegor Gaider , forced to leave the Motherland rather suddenly on account of the Glushkov affair.

Former Aeroflot chairman Nikolai Glushkov and accomplices made off with some $250 million in Aeroflot’s cash  with much of it somehow winding up in Boris Berezovsky’s Swiss bank account. Glushkov was jailed, and Lugovoi, who happened to be warden of the jail, helped him escape to neighboring Georgia, a favorite haven for Russian mafia on the run. Lugovoi was charged and mysteriously released, although he claims he was acquitted. In any case, Lugovoi is part and parcel of the Berezovsky network, and if he had anything to do with the murder then the theory that this was a falling-out among Russian exiles, dressed up to look like a KGB hit, gains credibility. But how, then, does one explain the method utilized: polonium-210, which only a state is likely to have access to? Then again, if we look at Berezovsky’s estimated fortune of some $3 billion , his empire is for all intents and purposes a mini-state.

Add to this the assets of other exiled oligarchs, including many who fled to Israel , and you have resources equal to the task of procuring and delivering polonium-210 to any target. Yet this still doesn’t rule out state involvement in the operation, even if we assume Litvinenko’s death resulted from some internecine squabble within the London-based exile community. 4) Mario Scaramella , the Italian academic and “information peddler,” who acted as a consultant on the Mitrokhin Commission , is clearly implicated by Litvinenko himself in this account published in the Sunday Times of London: “At lunchtime in Piccadilly Litvinenko met the Italian, who said he was tired and needed to sit down. They repaired to a nearby Japanese restaurant, Itsu. ‘I ordered lunch,’ Litvinenko said. ‘But he ate nothing. He appeared to be nervous. He handed me a four-page document which he said he wanted me to read straight away. It contained a list of names of people, including FSB officers, who were purported to be connected with [Politkovskaya’s] murder. The document was an e-mail but it was not an official document.

I couldn’t understand why he had to come all the way to London to give it to me. He could have e-mailed it to me. I put it in my bag because I thought I’d look at it at home. But he said he wanted me to look at it right now. So I pulled it out of my bag. There were people who had to do with Politkovskaya’s murder. “‘I looked at some names. And I said I cannot tell you right away who these people are. There were some names in the text. Something about Berezovsky, something about me. I cannot accuse him of anything but the whole meeting was very strange.'” This blogger has it all over Scaramella, who has discovered that Litvinenko was a bit better acquainted with the Italian than the Times‘ reporters suggest. Scaramella was apparently the source of the Prodi accusations, which were given voice by representatives of the UK Independence Party in the European Parliament. He digs up some other interesting stuff, too, such as this fascinating juxtaposition of differing views on Scaramella’s role in the Litvinenko affair: “According to the FSB report published today in Moskovsky Komsomolets, Mr.

Litvinenko was poisoned in a London restaurant by a CIA agent, Mario Scaramella, on November 1, 2006, purportedly in connection with his role as a double agent, the role invented by the FSB in this story to discredit Mr. Litvinenko. “As earlier reported by the Chechepress news agency, Mario Scaramella is a FSB agent in Italy and a close friend and business partner of the FSB deputy chief Kolmogorov. The Italian visited several time the FSB headquarters in Moscow.” CIA or KGB  take your pick, according to your ideological inclinations! This report characterizes Scaramella as “a close associate of the FSB deputy chief Viktor Kolmogorov,” but that seems unlikely for someone who has served on the Mitrokhin Commission and specializes in exposing the dark secrets of the KGB. On the more credible side of the ledger, we have evidence that Scaramella is indeed a professor at the University of Naples, as well as general secretary of something called the Environmental Crime Prevention Program.

As people line up in London to get tested for exposure to radiation, one can only wonder what role someone so concerned with environmental crime played in all this Another tidbit uncovered by European Tribune: “He officially pontificated at various OSCE and Italian Space Agency get-togethers in 2001  at least one of which was also attended by SISMI agent Marco Mancini of Abu Omar kidnapping fame.” When I see the acronym SISMI , somehow the sheer craziness of the Litvinenko affair begins to make a kind of twisted sense . The Litvinenko affair recalls another SISMI-connected adventure, the Niger uranium forgeries , in that it also involves a document of dubious provenance, as described by the Times: “The document apparently named a group called Dignity and Honour, a mercenary organisation made up of former KGB spies. It is suspected of being used by the FSB for ‘deniable’ operations. ‘He [Scaramella] asked me: “Are these dangerous people? Am I in danger?”‘ said Litvinenko.” It looks like Litvinenko was the one in danger, and not, it appears, from Vladimir Putin.

As the European Tribune blogger put it: “A high-profile, right-of-centre ‘university professor’/’security expert’ (choose one) and prolific Mitrokhin-commission consultant on the more lurid zones of alleged KGB/Soviet misdeeds on excellent terms with Senator Paolo Guzzanti of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party does seem a somewhat improbable figure to get pinned with the role of Putin’s latest undercover hitman.” The world media is rushing to judgement and condemning Putin as the mad mastermind behind this terrorist act, yet there are some rather big problems with this theory: none of the known suspects are likely KGB assassins. Their loyalties, as far as can be discerned, lie in quite the opposite direction: Lugovoi, who ran afoul of the Putin administration, and Scaramella, whose anti-KGB credentials are apparently impeccable. The prejudices of the media, and the editorial writers, lead us down one path, but the facts  at least as they are known so far  take us down quite another.

Prejudice and political agendas always get in the way, but  in the end  the facts will come out, and when they do I’d be willing to bet that, no, Putin has not gone mad, and Russia did not nuke a British citizen on British soil. Just as it makes no political or strategic sense for Syria to have offed Hariri and Gemayel, so the murders of Politkovskaya and Litvinenko seem oddly counterintuitive if we attribute them to the KGB. In the end, we have to ask: who benefits from Litvinenko’s dramatic death? The answer: the oligarch s, and Putin’s enemies in general. That nuclear terrorism has raised its ugly head in this form is particularly ominous. What it shows is that we have more than al-Qaeda to worry about  and that we don’t even know the face of this particular enemy.

Read more by Justin Raimondo Alexander Litvinenko - Wikispooks Alexander Litvinenko Jump to: navigation , search Evidence about Litvinenko's death that was ignored/obfuscated by both the UK police and the Owen Inquiry, to be collated and included -- Peter P ( talk ) 07:57, 26 January 2016 (GMT) Alexander Litvinenko William Dunkerley An exiled Russian former security officer turned whistleblower who died of Polonium poisoning in London. Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko (30 August 1962 – 23 November 2006) was a former officer of the Russian FSB secret service, who specialised in tackling organised crime. [1] In November 1998, Litvinenko and several other FSB officers publicly accused their superiors of ordering the assassination of the Russian tycoon and oligarch Boris Berezovsky . Litvinenko was arrested the following March on charges of exceeding the authority of his position. He was acquitted in November 1999 but re-arrested before the charges were again dismissed in 2000.

He fled with his family to London and was granted political asylum in the United Kingdom, where he worked as a journalist, writer and "consultant" for both MI5 and MI6 Contents 10 References Background Litvinenko was born in Voronezh, south-west Russia . After school he joined the army and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Then, in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1988, he entered the counter-intelligence department of the KGB . In 1991, once the KGB's directorates had split up, he worked for the federal security service ( FSB ), fighting " terrorism " and organised crime, sometimes operating in Chechnya . In 1997 he moved to one of the most secret divisions of the service, a unit called URPO investigating "organised criminal formations". [2] Allegations about Berezovsky and the Russian apartment bombings Alexander Litvinenko had been tasked to counter attempts by the Russian mafia to infiltrate the security services, but came to realise he was not succeeding.

In November 1998, Litvinenko staged a press conference in Moscow, in which he accused the FSB – then headed by Vladimir Putin – of ordering him to assassinate Boris Berezovsky , fuelling a firestorm in the Russian parliament. Within days Litvinenko was under investigation and within weeks found himself in prison. His allies contrived his release in December 1999 and by the summer of 2000 they were urging him to flee or face a lifetime in a political gulag. Boris Berezovsky had already installed himself in London and was busy sponsoring every enemy of Putin who crossed his path. He owed a debt of gratitude to Litvinenko and, in November 2000, Berezovsky arranged for him, Marina and their son, Anatoly, to escape from Russia, sending biochemist Alex Goldfarb , a Russian émigré and pro-democracy campaigner, to escort the family to London. Alexander Litvinenko assumed he would be feted in the west.

He looked to the experiences of other leading exiles, including Oleg Gordievsky , the far more senior former KGB London station chief and an old friend, who had been embraced by the British authorities when he defected in 1985. In London, Litvinenko continued his onslaught with a book, The FSB Blows Up Russia , in which he accused his former employers of the 1999 Russian apartment bombings which killed about 300 people and was exploited as a casus belli for the attacks on Chechen rebels. [3] Global Drug Trade "Litvinenko was working for the KGB in St Petersburg in 2001 and 2002.

He became concerned at the vast amounts of heroin coming from Afghanistan, in particular from the fiefdom of the (now) head of the Afghan armed forces, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, in north and east Afghanistan." Craig Murray Mitrokhin Commission In December 2003, Litvinenko was approached by Mario Scaramella to take part in the Mitrokhin Commission that had been formed two years earlier by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi ostensibly to discover if senior figures in the Italian establishment had been in the pay of the KGB - in reality a vehicle for smearing Berlusconi's socialist enemies. The Commission was a meal ticket and would enable him to see more of his brother, Maxim , who had fled Russia before him and was living in Senigallia, a small Italian port on the Adriatic coast. Litvinenko's only concern was about the value of the information he had to bring to the table. In the FSB , he'd had no connection with the foreign wing and no knowledge of its network of recruits in abroad, the people who were to be the focus of the commission.

To back him up, he took along a new contact he had made through the Berezovsky circle, Evgeni Limarev , also a Russian exile, who lived in France and was the son of a high-ranking KGB officer. [4] Targets of the Mitrokhin Commission included former Italian Prime Ministers Romano Prodi and Massimo D'Alema , Green Party leader Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio , other senior politicians, intelligence officials and judges, as well as journalists from La Repubblica . Romano Prodi Litvinenko had no compunction in recalling a piece of gossip he had been told by a former KGB deputy director as he fled Russia. In 2000, General Anatoly Trofimov had warned Litvinenko not to go to Rome since "Prodi is our man in Italy". He was referring to Romano Prodi , the former Italian prime minister who went on to become president of the European Commission. Now Litvinenko regurgitated the unfounded claim to Scaramella who persuaded him to write it down. [4] On 29 March 2006, Litvinenko met UKIP MEP Gerard Batten at the Itsu restaurant in London.

Four days later, with an Italian general election imminent, Batten called for an Inquiry into Prodi in the European Parliament . Prodi responded by threatening to sue Litvinenko and Scaramella. In the resulting controversy, Silvio Berlusconi was forced to wind up the Mitrokhin Commission , and Prodi won the election. [4] The Imam Rapito Affair Litvinenko, Limarev and Scaramella met in Italy with Robert Seldon Lady , a CIA agent posted as a political officer to the US consulate in Milan. Lady was allegedly involved in the so-called Imam Rapito affair, the kidnapping of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr . The Mitrokhin Commission investigated allegations that the prosecutor in the case, Armando Spataro , had secret links to the KGB . [4] Semion Mogilevich Litvinenko and Scaramella clamed that Semion Mogilevich , a Ukrainian organised crime boss, had extensive links to the Putin government in Russia. [4] Alexander Talik In October 2005, Litvinenko accused Ukrainian Alexander Talik of being an FSB agent in Italy with links to Mogilevich.

Talik claimed he had been framed after refusing to provide information to Scaramella. In the same month, Litvinenko and Scaramella gave Italian police details of a plot to Kill Litvinenko's borther Maxim. In November Litvinenko released the story in the Ukrainian press. By now the Italian police had begun tapping the phones of Litvinenko, Scaramella and Talik. [5] Andrei Lugovoi In January 2006, Litvinenko attended Boris Berezovsky 's birthday party at Blenheim Palace. He was seated with Andrei Lugovoi , who, according to The Guardian was a former KGB and FSB colleague of Alexander Talik . Litvinenko reportedly told Alex Goldfarb that he had agreed to become Lugovoi's man in London. [4] Limarev claims In October 2006, Evgeni Limarev sent Scaramella a series of emails claiming that the Russians were out to kill everyone connected with the Mitrokhin Commission . These emails were reportedly the subject of Scaramella's final meeting with Litvinenko.

[4] Polonium poisoning Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with the radioactive substance Polonium-210 at some time on or around 1 November 2006. Millennium Hotel meeting Persuasive evidence that Sir Robert Owen 's conclusions about those responsible for the death of Litvinenko are dead wrong At about 10am on 1 November 2006, Litvinenko met with Andrei Lugovoi who had also served in the FSB until 1999, and who then owned a private security firm in Moscow, in the Pine bar of the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair (close to the US embassy). He had been meeting Lugovoi on his trips to London for several months, and two weeks earlier had brought him to Erinys International , one of the security companies in Berezovsky 's building, to discuss a business proposal. According to Lugovoi, who had come to London to watch a football match between Arsenal and CSKA Moscow, Litvinenko now wanted to discuss the progress of that venture.

Also at the meeting were two other people unknown to Litvinenko: Dmitry Kovtun , a business partner of Lugovoi, and another partner named Vyacheslav Sokolenko . Litvinenko's friends insist that he drank tea during the meeting. [6] Itsu restaurant meeting At around 3pm, Mr Litvinenko met Mario Scaramella , another long-standing contact, who had called him out of the blue saying he wanted to bring forward a meeting planned for 10 November to discuss important documents. Scaramella told Mr Litvinenko that he had received a death threat aimed at both of them. They met for 35 minutes in the basement of a branch of Itsu, a sushi restaurant chain. After the meeting, Litvinenko went to Boris Berezovsky's office. According to his wife Marina, when he returned home, he felt ill. [7] Final Days After three days of sickness and stomach pains, Alexander Litvinenko was admitted to Barnet General Hospital, north London on 4 November. [8] It was initially suspected that he had been poisoned with thallium.

The main, if not only, source for the "revenge-murder scenario" were people funded by Boris Berezovsky. A web site in France, which had received financing from Berezovsky's foundation, circulated a report that there was a Russian "hit list" that had Litvinenko's name on it. Even though the "hit list" itself never materialised, it helped link the death of Litvinenko in the public mind with that of Anna Politkovskaya , the crusading journalist who had been murdered a month earlier, in October 2006, and whose name was also on the putative hit list. Meanwhile, a Chechen website, also supported by Berezovsky's foundation, ran stories such as "FSB Attempted to Murder Russian Defector in London." At the hospital, Berezovsky's PR consultant, Lord Tim Bell , began briefing journalists, arranging interviews and supplying photographs of an emaciated, hairless Litvinenko. [9] On 17 November 2006, he was transferred to University College Hospital under armed guard as his condition worsened.

[10] According to Edward Jay Epstein 's account, doctors realised that Litvinenko was suffering from polonium poisoning only a few hours before his death on 23 November 2006. A a press conference that day, Berezovsky associate Alex Goldfarb read out a statement that he said had been dictated to him by Litvinenko, which accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of responsibility for his murder. [11] Investigation The Health Protection Agency confirmed on 24 November 2006 that Litvinenko had been poisoned by Polonium-210. [12] The next day the HPA announced that Polonium-210 had been found in "a small number of areas at the Itsu sushi restaurant at 167 Piccadilly, London, and in some areas of the Millennium Hotel, Grosvenor Square in London and at Mr Litvinenko's home in Muswell Hill." [13] On 28 November the HPA said it was "also aware of the two new addresses where Police confirmed last night that traces of Polonium-210 had been found - 7 Down Street and 25 Grosvenor Street.

[13] On 29 November, the HPA confirmed that traces had been found at 58 Grosvenor Street. [13] On 6 December, the HPA announced that localised contamination had been found at Parkes Hotel in Knightsbridge. [13] On 8 December, it said that traces of contamination had been found at 1 Cavendish Place. [13] On 1 December, the HPA said that a second person "who was in direct and very close contact with Mr Litvinenko has a significant quantity of the radioactive isotope Polonium-210 (Po-210) in their body." [13] This was Mario Scaramella , but on 9 December, the HPA said that further tests showed only "very low levels of Po-210 in his body." [13] In November 2007, Edward Jay Epstein visited Moscow and was shown the British files by Russian investigators. "What immediately caught my attention was that it did not include the basic documents in any murder case, such as the postmortem autopsy report, which would help establish how — and why — Litvinenko died.

In lieu of it, Detective Inspector Robert Lock of the Metropolitan Police Service at New Scotland Yard wrote that he was 'familiar with the autopsy results' and that Litvinenko had died of 'Acute Radiation Syndrome'. Like Sherlock Holmes's clue of the dog that didn't bark, this omission was illuminating in itself." [14] Public Inquiry On 21 January 2016, a long-awaited UK report into his death [15] concluded that two Russians - Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun - poisoned 44-year-old Litvinenko in London in 2006 by putting the radioactive substance Polonium-210 into his drink. The original inquest into the death became stalled over the refusal of the UK government to allow evidence from MI5 and MI6 to be presented. Some eight years later, on 24 July 2014, the inquest was turned into a so-called Public Inquiry in which much of its evidence was then heard in private.

The Inquiry announcement was made in the immediate aftermath of the shooting down of a civilian airliner, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 , over Eastern Ukraine and whilst President Putin was being vilified by western politicians and commercially-controlled media in the most extraordinary and sustained manner, as the "obvious" perpetrator. This led to understandable accusations from Russia that the Inquiry had more to do with demonising President Putin and Russia than with genuine concern for justice in the Litvinenko murder case. The Russian Investigative Committee into the death then refused to take part on the grounds that it was neither public nor free from political motivation. In a Kafkaesque move that effectively denied the chief suspects opportunity to provide evidence in their own defence, the UK Inquiry declined to hear video-link evidence from them and eventually held them to be jointly responsible for the death. [16] Inquiry chairman Sir Robert Owen said he was "sure" Litvinenko's murder had been carried out by the two men and that they were "probably" acting under the direction of Moscow's FSB intelligence service, and approved by the FSB's Nikolai Patrushev and President Putin.

He said Mr Litvinenko's work for MI5 and MI6 , his criticism of the FSB and Mr Putin, and his association with other Russian dissidents were possible motives for his killing. There was also "undoubtedly a personal dimension to the antagonism" between Mr Putin and Mr Litvinenko. Home Secretary Theresa May told the House of Commons that the murder was a "blatant and unacceptable" breach of international law, and said Prime Minister David Cameron would raise the findings with President Putin at "the next available opportunity".

A Downing Street spokeswoman said the report's conclusions were "extremely disturbing", saying: "It is not the way for any state, let alone a permanent member of the UN Security Council , to behave." Responding to the report, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Alexander Yakovenko said: "For us it is absolutely unacceptable that the report concludes that the Russian state was in any way involved in the death of Mr Litvinenko on British soil," [17] Andrei Lugovoi, who is now a politician in Russia, said: "The results of the investigation made public today yet again confirm London's anti-Russian position, its blinkeredness and the unwillingness of the English to establish the true reason of Litvinenko's death." Dmitry Kovtun said he would not comment on the report until he got more information about its contents. [18] Related Documents BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Sophistication behind spy's poisoning Sophistication behind spy's poisoning Science reporter, BBC News Mr Litvinenko was a former KGB agent The poisoning of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko would have required considerable scientific know-how, according to experts.

Mr Litvinenko's death on 23 November was linked to a "major dose" of radioactive polonium-210 found in his body. Traces of radiation have since been found at five locations around London, including a sushi restaurant and hotel visited by the Russian. But the radioactive substance implicated is as difficult to obtain as it can be to detect. Polonium-210 occurs naturally in the environment and in people at low concentrations. But acquiring enough of it to kill would require individuals with expertise and connections. Experts estimate that less than a microgram (one millionth of a gram) of the radioactive substance could have been responsible for Mr Litvinenko's death. To produce the amounts required you would need to use a nuclear reactor Professor Nick Priest, University of Middlesex Higher doses than that would have killed the former KGB officer more quickly. Polonium-210 emits intense radiation in the form of alpha particles, but these are unable to travel very far. Professor Nick Priest, one of the few UK scientists to have worked with polonium-210, told BBC News that these particles penetrate about 60 micrometres through biological tissue - equivalent to the thickness of a few cells.

But because alpha particles deposit their energy in a rush, they can cause terrible damage to those cells if they get inside the body through swallowing or inhalation. Polonium is also particularly harmful because it is taken up by a broad spread of the body's tissues, whereas other radioactive elements might bind to certain tissues - such as bone - preferentially. Lethal dose "If you had it in a glass or tin vessel, you wouldn't be able to detect it outside. Which makes it rather ideal as a poison," said Dr Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant to the Oxford Research Group. But once that container is open, polonium-210 particles have a tendency to creep out and contaminate the surrounding environment. Professor Priest, now at Middlesex University, said the polonium could, in theory, have been dissolved in a liquid: "It could have been any volume from a litre down to a few drops," he said. Equally, it could have been bound to another material such as chalk. The amount of polonium thought to have been used was hardly enough to see with the naked eye. Radiation has been found at several sites around London There are at least three ways to make polonium-210.

It can either be extracted from rocks containing radioactive uranium, produced in a nuclear research reactor, or separated chemically from the substance radium-226. The element was discovered in 1897 using the extraction method. Marie Curie isolated polonium from the uranium-rich mineral pitchblende, later naming it after her native country of Poland. But according to Nick Priest, this method could not have produced enough of the material to kill Alexander Litvinenko. "To produce the amounts required you would need to use a nuclear reactor," he told BBC News. Nuclear research reactors are used primarily for the production of radioisotopes (the radioactive forms of elements in the periodic table) and differ from the power reactors used to generate electricity. Professor Priest has worked for the UK's National Radiological Protection Board - now part of the Health Protection Agency - and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) at Harwell.

EXPOSURE THREAT Contact with carrier's sweat or urine could lead to exposure But polonium-210 must be ingested to cause damage Radiation has very short range and cannot pass through skin Washing eliminates traces He says the most likely way of producing the required polonium-210 is to bombard the element bismuth in a reactor with neutron particles in order to change it into a radioactive form called bismuth-210. This undergoes radioactive decay, yielding polonium-210 and a smaller amount of radioactive thallium-206 as "daughter products". The polonium then needs to be chemically separated from bismuth. Klaus Luetzenkirchen, director of nuclear chemistry at the Institute for Transuranium Elements in Karlsruhe, Germany, said polonium could be chemically separated from radium-226. But he added that this would need sophisticated lab facilities because the latter substance produces dangerous levels of penetrating radiation. Research reactors Some experts estimate the number of reactor facilities around the world capable of producing polonium-210 is in the region of 40-50. But others think the number could be much lower.

The available evidence points to a source for the poison outside the UK. RADIATION TYPES Alpha particles are stopped by a sheet of paper and cannot pass through unbroken skin Beta particles are stopped by an aluminium sheet Gamma rays are stopped by thick lead These include several facilities throughout the former Soviet Union, along with other countries such as Australia and Germany. "There is only one reactor in the United Kingdom that could produce it, and I'm pretty sure they didn't," said Nick Priest. He explained that it was unlikely that polonium-210 could be produced in a reactor without administrators knowing about it. Alternatively, the radioactive substance could have been purchased from a commercial supplier. Chris Lloyd, a radiation protection adviser, said polonium-210 was used commercially in devices that control static electricity. The polonium in anti-static devices is not in a form that can be readily administered as a poison. It would be difficult - though not impossible - to retrieve. Polonium, along with the element beryllium, was once used as a neutron trigger in atomic bombs produced by the US, the UK and Russia. It was also used as a heat source in the Soviet Lunokhod Moon rovers during the 1970s. Stolen goods?

The Litvinenko affair also placed the black market trade in radioactive materials under renewed scrutiny. Since 1995, the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has maintained a database on the illicit trafficking of nuclear and radioactive materials. As of last year, the database contained 827 confirmed incidents. Of these, 224 incidents involved nuclear materials and 516 involved radioactive materials. The IAEA said it had not received confirmation of polonium finding its way into this underground market, but there have been a number of unconfirmed reports. On Tuesday, Russia's nuclear chief rejected suggestions that the polonium-210 linked to Mr Litvinenko's death could have been stolen from the country. Sergei Kiriyenko said Russia exports 8g of polonium-210 each month, all of it to the US. Exports to Britain ended about five years ago. While he stressed the tough export controls on polonium-210, the nuclear chief said the final products in which polonium was used worldwide were outside official controls.

Nuclear forensics In theory, it might be possible for investigators in the Litvinenko case to trace the origin of the polonium-210. But this would probably depend on finding trace amounts of other substances. "In general, different types of [radioactive] materials pick up characteristics during their production," said Ian Hutcheon, an expert in nuclear forensics at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. "If you have samples of the material, you can gather information about where they were or were not produced by analysing trace constituents." He told BBC News: "There aren't many places around the world that make polonium. I was able to find only two or three, so I don't think we are looking at 50 different places." Klaus Luetzenkirchen said: "If there was only polonium-210 and nothing else then I presume it would be extremely difficult - if not impossible - to trace it back.

"All you have is a certain kind of element or isotope, which, in principle, could come from anywhere." Even if the origin of the polonium could be tracked down, commentators point out that there was no guarantee it would lead to a suspect, especially if the material was stolen. Professor Alistair Hay, from the University of Leeds, told BBC News 24 that those responsible had carefully chosen polonium-210 for its toxicity and difficulty of detection. "Where the substance has come from is highly important, of course, and that's now the job of Scotland Yard," he said.

Question: A radioactive form of which element was responsible for the death of the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006?
Answer: Polonium