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| Ex-Russian spy investigating death of journalist poisoned
Quote:
London hospital moves ex-Russian spy to intensive care as condition worsens
The Associated Press
A former Russian spy allegedly poisoned with a toxic metal has been transferred to an intensive care unit in London after his condition deteriorated, hospital officials said Monday.
Col. Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB and Federal Security Service agent, was under armed guard at a London hospital, where he is fighting for his life after apparently being given the deadly poison thallium.
Litvinenko "remains in a serious condition, but last night there was a slight deterioration in his condition, and he was transferred to intensive care as a precautionary measure," University College Hospital said in a statement.
Litvinenko, who had been looking into the killing of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, told reporters last week that he fell ill on Nov. 1 following a meal at a sushi restaurant with an Italian contact who claimed to have details about the murder.
Alexander Goldfarb, who helped Litvinenko defect to Britain in 2000, said the former spy told him more details on Monday morning about the day he was poisoned during a telephone conversation from his hospital bed.
Goldfarb said all options should be explored, including whether the poison might have been sprinkled into Litvinenko's drink during a meeting at a central London hotel on Nov. 1 before he went to the sushi restaurant.
Litvinenko briefly met two men from Moscow — one of whom was a former KGB officer he knew — for tea at the hotel, Goldfarb said.
"I called Alexander in hospital ... he told me it is true, on that day, before meeting the Italian, he met with two Russians," Goldfarb said, adding that Litvinenko had not previously met the second man.
Litvinenko told police about the two men, he said.
Oleg Gordievsky, a former senior KGB agent who defected to Britain in the mid-1980s, alleged in an interview with The Times newspaper that those who tried to kill Litvinenko would have had to have obtained permission "from the top" for the operation.
Gordievsky alleged the attack was carried out by a former agent who was recruited from prison by the KGB's main successor agency, FSB, the newspaper reported.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed suggestions that Russian intelligence services were involved as "nothing but sheer nonsense."
Police said a specialist crime unit began an investigation Friday into how Litvinenko may have been poisoned. No arrests had been made, said a Scotland Yard spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with force policy.
Earlier on Monday, Goldfarb told British Broadcasting Corp. radio that the former agent was poisoned because of his opposition to the Russian regime.
"It's very difficult to imagine the president's ordered the killing, it's true, and nobody's saying that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin personally ordered it, though it's very likely," Goldfarb said.
Britain's Press Association identified the Italian contact he met at the restaurant as Mario Scaramella, an academic who has helped investigate KGB activity in Italy during the Cold War. Scaramella could not immediately be reached for comment.
Politkovskaya, who had written critically about abuses by Russian and pro-Moscow Chechen forces fighting separatists in Chechnya, was gunned down Oct. 7 inside her Moscow apartment building. Her attackers have not been found.
A doctor treating Litvinenko told the BBC that tests showed he had been poisoned by thallium — a toxic metal found in rat poison.
Dr. John Henry, a clinical toxicologist who treated Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko when he was poisoned by dioxin during his 2004 presidential election campaign, told the BBC that thallium can cause damage to the nervous system and organ failure, and that just one gram can be lethal.
Kremlin critics claim poisoning — which is extremely hard to prove — is a common Soviet-era practice that seems to have reappeared since Putin, an ex-KGB officer, became president.
Litvinenko joined the KGB counterintelligence forces in 1988, and rose to the rank of colonel in the FSB. He began specializing in terrorism and organized crime in 1991, and was transferred to the FSB's most secretive department on criminal organizations in 1997.
He fled Russia and claimed asylum in Britain in November 2000.
| Quote:
Former KGB agent and Kremlin foe, in London exile, may have been poisoned
By Alan Cowell
The New York Times
The British police said Sunday that they were investigating the suspected poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian former KGB operative exiled in Britain who had been inquiring into the death of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist killed in Moscow last month.
The Russian authorities had no immediate comment on suggestions in media reports that the Russian secret service was behind the poisoning. Litvinenko is depicted by his associates as a prominent campaigner against the Kremlin.
From the details made available by the police and news reports, the purported attempt on Litvinenko's life, using the toxic metal thallium, had the hallmarks of a spy thriller in the Cold War vein of John le Carré.
According to The Sunday Times of London, which had interviewed Litvinenko, apparently before his condition deteriorated, the former agent had met with an Italian contact identified only as Mario in a central London sushi bar on Nov. 1.
"I ordered lunch but he ate nothing," The Sunday Times quoted Litvinenko as saying. "He appeared to be very nervous. He handed me a four-page document, which he said he wanted me to read right away."
"It contained a list of people, including FSB officers, who were purported to be connected with the journalist's murder," he said, referring to the fatal shooting of Politkovskaya in Moscow on Oct. 7. The FSB is the Federal Security Service, the successor agency of the KGB.
Last week, Litvinenko told reporters he began to feel sick within hours of the meeting with Mario.
Dr. Andres Virchis of Barnet Hospital in London, where Litvinenko was first treated, said Sunday that his bone marrow had "failed" and that he was "not producing any normal immune cells or white cells." As Litvinenko's condition worsened, he began to lose his hair, Virchis said.
A police spokeswoman, speaking on the condition of anonymity under police rules, said specialist officers were "investigating a suspicious poisoning." She described Litvinenko's condition as "serious but stable."
In an interview, Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian tycoon and an opponent of President Vladimir Putin, said he had visited Litvinenko in the hospital and found him "damaged terribly."
Berzovsky said Litvinenko had been granted British citizenship and so the poisoning was "a terror attack against a British citizen in Britain."
Litvinenko was granted asylum in Britain in 2001. In 2003 he published a book, "The FSB Blows up Russia," accusing the Russian secret service of orchestrating a wave of explosions in apartment buildings in 1999 that helped provoke the second Chechen war.
He also claimed familiarity with the alleged techniques of the Russian secret service. At the time of the dioxin poisoning of the Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko, in 2004, Litvinenko said a secret KGB laboratory in Moscow was still operated by the FSB and specialized in the study of poisons.
"The view inside our agency was that poison is just a weapon, like a pistol," said Litvinenko, who served in the KGB and the FSB, from 1988 to 1999. "It's not seen that way in the West, but it was just viewed as an ordinary tool."
Sunday afternoon, Litvinenko was said to have only a "50-50 chance" of surviving, according to Alex Goldfarb, a friend who visited him in the hospital. "He looks like a ghost," Goldfarb told the BBC.
John Henry, a clinical toxicologist, told the BBC: "He's got a prospect of recovering. He's a got a prospect of dying."
Henry, who also treated Yushchenko, identified the suspected poison as thallium, a toxic metal used in rat poison and insecticides. "It is tasteless, colorless and odorless," he said. "It takes about a gram to kill you."
Speaking later to reporters outside University College Hospital in London, Goldfarb said the police had interviewed Litvinenko on Sunday.
"He is in a fighting mood," Goldfarb said. Asked why Litvinenko might has been targeted, Goldfarb said: "He is one of the top public enemies of the Russian FSB and of Putin, particularly because of his book," referring to President Vladimir Putin. He added that Litvinenko belonged to "the so-called London émigré circle, which was branded by Russia a terrorist cell on British soil."
Goldfarb called the poisoning "very scary. It means there's no limit."
John Henry, a clinical toxicologist, told the BBC: "He's got a prospect of recovering. He's a got a prospect of dying."
Henry, who also treated Yushchenko, identified the suspected poison as thallium, a toxic metal used in rat poison and insecticides. "It is tasteless, colorless and odorless," he said. "It takes about a gram to kill you."
| From the IHT: 1, 2 __________________ (i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
e. e. cummings - somewhere i have never traveled
|
This is just too sad.
