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A former Russian spy and critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin was fighting for his life in a London hospital, as his friends blamed the Kremlin for the apparent bid to kill him by poisoning.
Alexander Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) — successor to the Soviet KGB — fell ill after a November 1 meeting in a central London sushi bar with a contact who purportedly had information on the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
Specialist detectives launched an investigation as the 43-year-old lay in hospital in a serious but stable condition, fighting what an expert said was poisoning by thallium, a toxic metal.
“Officers from the specialist crime directorate are investigating a suspicious poisoning,” a spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police told AFP.
“The inquiry is continuing and there's no arrest at this stage.”
Friends of Litvinenko said they were in no doubt that the FSB was out to get the outspoken defector, who was granted political asylum in Britain in 2001, and reportedly became a British citizen last month.
Sources close to the Foreign Office told The Times that if Russia were responsible, “it would be taken very seriously”.
“We are not talking about a routine espionage dispute,” an unnamed source told The Times.
“This time we are dealing with the attempted murder of a foreign national in a foreign country using methods that we know the Russians are widely capable of … These are the sort of methods normally used by terrorists.”
A spokesman for the British foreign ministry said that it had not yet contacted Russia over the matter.
“We'll take guidance off Scotland Yard (the police) and we're going to be guided by them before we take any action,” the spokesman told AFP late on Sunday.
According to the former KGB station head in London, Litvinenko's poisoning was “state-sponsored” and “only” Russian intelligence could have done it.
“Of course it is state-sponsored,” Gordievsky, head of espionage in Britain for the Soviet Union's KGB intelligence agency in the 1980s and their highest-ranking defector ever, told The Times
“He was such an obvious enemy. Only the KGB is able to do this. The poison was very sophisticated,” Gordievsky, a close friend of Litvinenko, told the newspaper, still referring to the FSB by its Soviet-era name.
If Russia's security services were behind the alleged poisoning, it would not be the first time that they have tried to silence critics on the streets of London.
In 1978, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was stabbed in the leg while walking across London's Waterloo Bridge by a man with an umbrella which fired a ricin pellet. Markov died in hospital three days later.
KGB defectors including Gordievsky have since confirmed that the Soviet intelligence agency was behind the Markov killing.
Meanwhile, Britain's domestic Press Association news agency reported that Italian academic Mario Scaramella who was Litvinenko's last contact before falling ill went into hiding a week ago.
The Sunday Times said Scaramella gave Litvinenko a document with information on the murder last month of Politkovskaya, who was reportedly a friend of his.
Gordievsky dismissed speculation that Scaramella was involved in the poisoning, saying that Litvinenko “was already feeling unwell before the lunch. He was poisoned before he met the Italian.”
Instead Gordievsky said he suspected a former associate of Russian business oligarch Boris Berezovsky who had been held in prison and recently released. Litvinenko had fled to Britain after blowing the whistle on an alleged FSB plot to assassinate Berezovsky.
“He (the would-be assassin) used to be in Mr Berezovsky's entourage and was imprisoned in Moscow. Then suddenly he was released, and soon after that he became a businessman and a millionaire. It is all very suspicious,” Gordievsky told The Times.
“But the KGB has recruited agents in prisons and camps since the 1930s. That is how they work.”
Litvinenko himself, speaking to the Sunday Times, said he was not in a position to accuse Scaramella of involvement.
A friend of Litvinenko, Alex Goldfarb, said outside the hospital: “He looks terrible. He looks like a ghost actually. He lost all his hair. He hasn't eaten for 18 days.”
He added: “I think this is the work of the Russian secret service.”
The Russian embassy in London was unavailable for comment.
