Special Report: Ex-Russian spy
dies
BEIJING,
Dec. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- A former associate of Alexander Litvinenko said on
Saturday that he believed the former Russian spy was murdered because he had
compiled an eight-page dossier containing damaging details about a high-ranking
Kremlin figure.
One-time spy Yuri Shvets, who is based in the United
States, said Litvinenko was asked by a reputable investment British company
to write reports on five Russians and asked him for help. Shvets said he
had passed Litvinenko the information for the dossier on one individual in
September.
Shvets said that his friend showed the dossier to Andrei
Lugovoi, a former KGB agent and one of the men he met at a London hotel on Nov.
1, the day Litvinenko fell ill.
Showing Lugovoi the report "triggered the assassination,"
Shvets said. He told the BBC that he believed Lugovoi was still working for the
Russian security services, and had leaked the information to the Moscow
figure in question.
Shvets, who advised businesses and individuals on legal
and security issues in the former Soviet Union, said he had talked to Litvinenko
in hospital.
Litvinenko was convinced he was poisoned when he met three
Russians at the Millennium Hotel in London's Grosvenor Square, he added.
Shvets told the BBC that Litvinenko drank a tea which was
not made in front of him. "He was always saying 'I can identify my enemy a mile
away'. But in this particular case, when it came to his own life, he
failed."
Litvinenko died in London on Nov. 23 after ingesting a
quantity of highly radioactive polonium-210.
He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering
his killing. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement in Litvinenko's
death.
(Agencies)
Related:
Witness: Litvinenko may be poisoned
earlier than assumed
BEIJING, Dec. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Former Russian agent
Alexander Litvinenko might have been poisoned two weeks earlier than is
generally assumed, a key witness claimed in a newspaper interview published
Wednesday.
Andrei Lugovoi, who met with Litvinenko at a hotel in
London on Nov. 1, a few hours before Litvinenko fell ill, said he does not think
the poisoning took place on Nov. 1 as British investigators think. Instead, it
may occur in mid-October when Litvinenko and Lugovoi met another business
associate, Dmitry Kovtun.
UK: key witnesses in Litvinenko case
suddenly missing
BEIJING, Dec. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- The sudden disappearance
of a number of key witnesses in the Alexander Litvinenko investigation will make
it even harder for British detectives, whose inquiry has now spread across five
countries, The Times reported Wednesday.
Scotland Yard was struggling to gain access to vital
witnesses with former associates of Litvinenko, a former Russian spy, claiming
that they were too scared to come forward.
People close to Litvinenko contact in
no danger
BERLIN, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- Four people close to a Russian
contact of former agent Alexander Litvinenko were in no danger of radiation
contamination as first feared, said German authorities on Tuesday.
Marina W, the ex-wife of Dmitry Kovtun, her two children
and her new boyfriend were given the all-clear after precautionary tests at a
hospital on Monday, Gerald Kirchner of the Federal Bureau for Radiation
Protection told a Bavarian television channel.
Interpol joins probe into former
Russian agent's poisoning
MOSCOW, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- Interpol has joined the
investigation into the poisoning of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko,
the head of the organization's Russian office said on Tuesday.
4 tested in Hamburg for polonium that
kills Russian spy
BEIJING, Dec. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Four people were
hospitalized in Hamburg Monday, on suspicion they had been contaminated by
polonium, the same radioactive substance that killed former Russian spy
Alexander Litvinenko, The New York Times reported.
The four had contact in Germany with Russian businessman
Dmitri Kovtun, who spent four days in Hamburg in late October before flying to
London, where he and two other Russian men met at a hotel with Litvinenko on
Nov. 1. Litvinenko fell ill later that day from radiation poisoning and died
several weeks later.
Germany doubts Russian involvement in
polonium
BERLIN, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- A German radiation expert
doubted Monday that Russia involved in the polonium-210 poisoning of former
Russian spy Alexander Litvenenko.
Sebastian Pflugbeil, president of the German Society for
Radiation Protection, told ARD national television that he would not rule out
the possibility that the poisoners had deliberately strewn traces of the isotope
in London and Hamburg to mislead people.
