LONDON, november 20: A former Russian spy poisoned in Britain and now hospitalised under guard may have been targeted for his investigation into the killing of prominent anti-Kremlin journalist Anna Politkovskaya, friends and fellow dissidents said on Sunday.
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Col Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent, said earlier this week he fell ill on Nov 1 following a meal with an Italian contact who claimed to have details about the slaying of Politkovskaya, who was gunned down last month in Moscow.
The University College Hospital in London, where Litvinenko is admitted under armed guard, said he was in “serious but stable” condition.
Dr John Henry, who is treating Litvinenko, told the BBC tests showed he was the victim of poisoning by thallium— a toxic metal found in rat poison. Henry said thallium can cause damage to the nervous system and just one gram can be lethal.
Police said a specialist crime unit began an investigation on Friday into Litvinenko’s poisoning. No arrests had been made so far.
Litvinenko left Russia for Britain six years ago and has become an outspoken critic of the Kremlin. In a 2003 book, “The FSB Blows Up Russia,” he accused his country’s secret service agency of staging apartment-house bombings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people in Russia and sparked the second war in Chechnya.
Boris Berezovsky, the Russian dissident and tycoon who was at Litvinenko’s bedside on Friday, said the poisoning is likely to be the handiwork of Russia’s intelligence services. “It’s not complicated to say who fights against him,” Berezovsky said. “He’s Putin’s enemy, he started to criticise him and had lots of fears.”
Politkovskaya, who wrote critically about Russian forces in Chechnya, fell seriously ill after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow in 2004 during the school hostage crisis in Beslan. Colleagues say she was poisoned.
