Alexander Litvinenko

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For the murder, see Alexander Litvinenko poisoning.

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko (Russian: Александр Вальтерович Литвиненко) (4 December 1962^[1] or 30 August 1962^[2] – 23 November 2006) was a lieutenant-colonel in the KGB (Russia's security service) and later a Russian dissident and writer who is thought to have been poisoned in London.

After working for the KGB and its successor, the FSB, Litvinenko publicly accused his superiors of ordering the assassination of Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky. He was arrested by Russian authorities, released and later fled to the UK, where he was granted political asylum and citizenship.

Litvinenko tried to publish a book in Russia in which he described Vladimir Putin's rise to power as a coup d'état organized by the FSB. He stated a key element of FSB's strategy was to frighten Russians by bombing apartment buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities. He alleged the bombings were organized by FSB and blamed on Chechen terrorists to legitimise reprisals using military force in Chechnya.

On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later, becoming a rare victim of lethal polonium-210 radiation poisoning under highly suspicious circumstances. It is estimated that the amount of Polonium-210 used to kill Litvinenko would have cost £20 million ($ 39 million)^[3] . The fact that Litvinenko's revelations about alleged FSB misdeeds were followed seven years later by his poisoning — and his public accusations that the Russian government was behind his poisoning — resulted in worldwide media coverage.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career in Russian security services 3 Dissidence 3.1 Flight 3.2 Allegations against the Russian Government 3.3 Gerard Batten's allegations concerning Romano Prodi 4 Illness and poisoning 5 Possible conversion to Islam 6 Death and last statement 7 See also 8 References 9 Books by Litvinenko 10 External links

[edit] Early life

Alexander Litvinenko was born the son of physician Walter Litvinenko^[4] in the Russian city of Voronezh. He graduated from secondary school in 1980 in Nalchik and was then drafted into the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After a year of service, he matriculated from the Kirov Higher Command School in Vladikavkaz. After graduation in 1985, Litvinenko became a platoon commander in an Internal Troops regiment that guarded valuables in transit.

[edit] Career in Russian security services

Litvinenko became an agent of the KGB in 1986. In 1988, he was officially transferred to the Third Chief Directorate of the KGB (Military Counter Intelligence). In 1988, after studying for a year at the Novosibirsk Military Counter Intelligence School, he became an operational officer and served in KGB military counterintelligence until 1991.^[5]

In 1991, he was promoted to the Central Staff of the MB-FSK-FSB of Russia, specialising in counter-terrorist activities and infiltration of organized crime. He was awarded the title of "MUR veteran" for operations conducted with the Moscow criminal investigation department (MUR). Litvinenko also saw active military service in many of the so-called "hot spots" of the former USSR and Russia. In 1997, he was again promoted, this time to the Department for the Analysis of Criminal Organizations of the FSB, with the title of senior operational officer and deputy head of the Seventh Section. He was in charge of the protection of Boris Berezovsky, when Berezovsky held a government position. ^[6] Contrary to many news reports, Litvinenko was never a 'spy' and did not deal with secrets beyond information on operations against organized criminal groups, his wife said.^[7]

[edit] Dissidence

On 17 November 1998, during the period that Vladimir Putin was the head of the FSB, five officers of FSB's Directorate for the Analysis of Criminal Organizations appeared at a press conference in the Russian news agency Interfax. The five officers (including the director of the Seventh Department, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Gusyk, three senior operative officers — Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, Major Andrey Ponkin, and Colonel V. V. Shebalin, Lieutenant Constanyin Latyshonok, and German Scheglov) accused the director of the Directorate for the Analysis of Criminal Organizations Major-General Evgenii Khokholkov and his deputy, 1st Rank Captain Alexander Kamishnikov of ordering them in November 1997 to assassinate Boris Berezovsky, a Russian businessman who then held the high government post of Secretary of the Security Council and was close to President Boris Yeltsin; Berezovsky later fled to the UK to avoid criminal charges. The officers also claimed they were ordered to kill Mikhail Trepashkin and to kidnap a brother of the businessman Umar Dzhabrailov. Mikhail Trepashikin was present as a victim of the planned assassination. Several other FSB officers were also present to support the claims.^[8][9] The leader of the Democratic Russia party and proponent of lustration, Galina Starovoitova, was murdered just three days later.^[10] Litvinenko was dismissed from the FSB, and then arrested twice on charges which were dropped after he had spent time in Moscow prisons. In 1999, he was arrested on charges of abusing duties during the anti-terrorist campaign in Kostroma. He was released a month later after signing a written undertaking not to leave the country.

[edit] Flight

Litvinenko fled to Turkey from Ukraine on a forged passport, as his actual passport was confiscated by Russian authorities after criminal charges were filed against him. Litvinenko's wife Marina and five-year-old son Anatoly entered Turkey legally. With the help of Alexander Goldfarb, Litvinenko bought air tickets for the Istanbul-London-Moscow flight^[11] and asked for political asylum at Heathrow airport during the transit stop on November 1, 2000.^[12] Political asylum was granted on May 14, 2001^[13] and in October 2006 he became a naturalized British citizen.^[14]

[edit] Allegations against the Russian Government

In the book Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, published with the financial support of Berezovsky, Litvinenko alleged that agents from the FSB co-ordinated the 1999 Russian apartment bombings that killed more than 300 people. Russian officials blamed the explosions on Chechen separatists. This version of events was suggested earlier by journalist David Satter^[15] and Sergei Yushenkov, vice chairman of the Sergei Kovalev commission created by the Russian Parliament to investigate the bombings. However, Litvinenko provided many new factual details in his book. In December 2003 Russian authorities confiscated over 4000 copies of the book en route to Moscow from the publisher in Latvia.^[16] In the book Gang from Lubyanka (Лубянская преступная группировка), Litvinenko alleged that Vladimir Putin during his time at FSB was personally involved in organized crime.

Litvinenko stated in a June 2003 interview, with the Australian SBS television programme Dateline, that two of the Chechen terrorists involved in the 2002 Moscow theatre hostage crisis — whom he named as "Abdul the Bloody" and "Abu Bakar" — were working for the FSB, and that the agency manipulated the rebels into staging the attack.^[17] Litvinenko said: "[w]hen they tried to find [Abdul the Bloody and Abu Bakar] among the dead terrorists, they weren't there. The FSB got its agents out. So the FSB agents among Chechens organised the whole thing on FSB orders, and those agents were released." The story about FSB connections with the hostage takers was confirmed by Mikhail Trepashkin.^[8]

In a July 2005 interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Litvinenko alleged that Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained for half of a year by the FSB in Dagestan (a republic neighbouring Chechnya) in 1998.^[18][19] According to FSB spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko, Ayman al-Zawahiri was arrested by Russian authorities in Dagestan in December 1996 and released in May 1997.^[20]

With regard to 2005 bombings in London, Litvinenko said that "all the bloodiest terrorists of the world" were connected to FSB-KGB, including Carlos Ramírez the "Jackal", Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Abdullah Öcalan, Wadie Haddad of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, George Hawi who led the Communist Party of Lebanon, Ezekias Papaioannou from Cyprus, and Sean Garland from Ireland. He said that the "terrorism infection creeps away worldwide from the cabinets of the Lubyanka Square and the Kremlin".^[21][22] These claims are supported by Mitrokhin archive.

In July 2006 Litvinenko alleged in an article that Putin was a paedophile.^[23] He compared Putin to rapist and serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. He wrote that among people who knew about Putin's paedophilia were Anatoly Trofimov and the editor of the Russian newspaper "Top Secret", Artyom Borovik, who died in a aeroplane crash under suspicious circumstances just a week after trying to publish a paper about this subject.^[24] Former FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin now states he warned Litvinenko in 2002 about an FSB unit assigned to assassinate him.^[25]

Alexander Litvinenko also accused Vladimir Putin that he personally ordered the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and that politician Irina Hakamada warned Politkovskaya about threats to her life coming from the Russian government. In that regard, Politkovskaya asked for a piece of advice from Litvinenko. He recommended her to escape from Russia immediately. Irina Hakamada denied her involvement in passing any specific threats, and said that she warned Politkovskaya only in general terms more than a year ago, and that Politkovskaya blamed her and Mikhail Kasyanov for becoming the Kremlin's puppets.^[26]

[edit] Gerard Batten's allegations concerning Romano Prodi

In April 2006, a British Member of the European Parliament for London, Gerard Batten (United Kingdom Independence Party), claimed that Litvinenko had said he had been told that Romano Prodi, the Italian centre-left leader (the current Prime Minister of Italy) and former President of the European Commission, had been the KGB's "man in Italy." Batten demanded an inquiry into the allegations. He told the European Parliament that Litvinenko had been informed by FSB deputy chief, General Anatoly Trofimov (who was shot dead in Moscow in 2005^[27]) that "Romano Prodi is our man (in Italy)". According to Brussels-based newspaper, the EU Reporter on 3 April 2006, "another high-level source, a former KGB operative in London, has confirmed the story".^[28]

However, there is at least one possible contrasting view regarding Litvinenko's reported allegations against Prodi: an interview which, according to La Repubblica, one of the main Italian newspapers, Litvinenko had given to one of its reporters on 3 March 2005. In this interview, published shortly after Litvinenko's death, it was revealed that in March 2004, he had been asked by Mario Scaramella (see below) if the tip that Prodi had passed on about the safe house where Aldo Moro was held after being kidnapped by the Red Brigades had its source in the KGB (and not in a séance, as Prodi had claimed); and if the KGB were behind Moro's kidnapping and the training of the Red Brigades. Litvinenko's reply, according to La Repubblica, was: "I said that I did not know any details about Moro's kidnapping and that I had never heard Prodi mentioned. I just pointed out that, if they wanted to hear my opinion as an expert, it was hardly believable that Prodi had learned that piece of information during a séance and that surely the KGB had followed the kidnapping trying to acquire information. I did not have and I do not have any kind of evidence about Prodi."^[29]

On 26 April 2006, Batten repeated his call for a parliamentary inquiry, revealing that "former, senior members of the KGB are willing to testify in such an investigation, under the right conditions". He added, "It is not acceptable that this situation is unresolved, given the importance of Russia's relations with the European Union".^[30]

[edit] Illness and poisoning

Main article: Alexander Litvinenko poisoning

On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and became hospitalized. His illness was later attributed to poisoning with radionuclide polonium-210 after the Health Protection Agency found significant amounts of the rare and highly toxic element in his body.^[31] In interviews, Litvinenko stated that he met with two former KGB agents early on the day he fell ill, one of whom was Andrei Lugovoi, a former bodyguard of Russian ex-prime minister Yegor Gaidar (who also suffered from a mysterious illness in November 2006). Later, he had lunch at Itsu, a sushi restaurant on Piccadilly in London, with an Italian acquaintance, Mario Scaramella, to whom he reportedly made defamatory allegations regarding the Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi.^[32] Scaramella, attached to the Mitrokhin Commission investigating KGB penetration of Italian politics, claimed to have information on the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, 48, a journalist who was killed at her Moscow apartment in October 2006.

Marina Litvinenko, widow of the deceased, has accused Moscow of orchestrating the murder. Though she believes the order probably did not come from Putin himself, she does believe it was done at the behest of the authorities, and, as such, has announced that she will refuse to provide evidence to any Russian investigation out of fear that it would be misused or misrepresented.^[33]

[edit] Possible conversion to Islam

Two days before his death Litvinenko, a disenchanted Russian Orthodox Christian, informed his father that he had converted to Islam: the actual conversion happened at a point during his sickness but before he knew he was going to die.^[34][35] Akhmed Zakayev, Foreign Minister of Chechen government-in-exile who lived next door to Mr Litvinenko and considered him "as a brother",^[36] said: "He was read to from the Qur'an the day before he died and had told his wife and family that he wanted to be buried in accordance with Muslim tradition."^[37] According to Vladimir Bukovsky, Litvinenko accepted Islam mostly to show his solidarity with Chechen people, who he felt were brutally oppressed by Russians.^[38] Before his burial, prayers were said for Litvinenko at Regent's Park Mosque.^[39] Litvinenko's reported conversion to Islam and the related wish for Muslim funeral rites were recognized by his father, but have been rejected by his widow, Marina, as well as his close friend (and press spokesman during his illness), Alex Goldfarb who preferred a non-denominational ceremony.^[40]

[edit] Death and last statement

On 22 November, Litvinenko's medical staff at University College Hospital reported he had suffered a "major setback" due to either heart failure or an overnight heart attack; he died the following day. Scotland Yard reported that "[i]nquiries continue into the circumstances surrounding how Mr Litvinenko, 43 years, of North London, became unwell."^[41]

On 24 November, a posthumous statement was released. Litvinenko's friend Alex Goldfarb — who is also the chairman of Boris Berezovsky's Civil Liberties Fund and Berezovsky's lawyer — claimed Litvinenko had dictated it to him three days earlier:

I would like to thank many people. My doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are doing all they can for me, the British police who are pursuing my case with vigour and professionalism and are watching over me and my family. I would like to thank the British government for taking me under their care. I am honoured to be a British citizen. I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight. I thank my wife Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds. But as I lie here I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like. I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition. You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women. You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.

Putin disputed the authenticity of this note while attending a Russia-EU summit in Helsinki:

It is a pity that tragic events like death have been used for political provocations. Those who did it [concocted the note] are not God, and Mr. Litvinenko is unfortunately not Lazarus.[42][43]

Litvinenko's postmortem took place on 1 December and has been completed. It has been stated that three physicians attended, including one chosen by the family. The results will take several days to be announced.^[44]

On 25 November, two days after Litvinenko's death, an article attributed to him was published by the The Mail on Sunday entitled "Why I believe Putin wanted me dead".^[45]

The police are now treating his death as murder.^[46] Litvinenko was buried at Highgate Cemetery in north London on 7 December.^[39]

[edit] See also

• John Henry, toxicologist who dealt with Litvinenko's poisoning
• Andrey Kozlov, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation who was assassinated
• Anna Politkovskaya, murdered Russian journalist and human rights activist well-known for her opposition to the Putin administration
• Paul Klebnikov, murdered American journalist of Russian descent who was known for his strong criticism of Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky.
• Artyom Borovik, Russian journalist who died in a plane crash while investigating Russian apartment bombings
• Sergei Yushenkov, vice chairman of Kovalev commission who was assassinated while investigating Russian apartment bombings
• Yuri Shchekochikhin, journalist who was poisoned while investigating Russian apartment bombings and other FSB related cases
• Galina Starovoitova, assassinated leader of Democratic Russia party
• Nikolay Khokhlov, another man who refused to be a KGB assassin and was poisoned like Litvinenko
• Boris Berezovsky, a Russian businessman who fled to the UK and was granted political asylum
• Georgi Markov, Bulgarian dissident; suspected KGB involvement in his 1978 assassination
• Yegor Gaidar, Russian economist who fell ill under mysterious circumstances only days after Litvinenko's death
• Boris Stomakhin, leader of "Movement for independence of Chechnya" imprisoned in Russia
• Mario Scaramella, key Italian security expert who was working with Litvinenko and also was contaminated with polonium-210
• Julia Svetlichnaja Student of University of Westminster and former employee of Russian Investments (related to Yukos Oil) who met with and wrote an article discrediting Litvinenko
• Nuclear crime
• Mitrokhin Archive
• Conspiracy theory
• State-sponsored terrorism

[edit] References

[edit] Books by Litvinenko

• A. Litvinenko and A. Goldfarb. Gang from Lubyanka (Russian) GRANI, New York, 2002. ISBN 0-9723878-0-3.
  • А. Литвиненко Лубянская преступная группировка 2002 Full book in Russian

• Yuri Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, and Geoffrey Andrews. Blowing up Russia : Terror from within. New York 2002. ISBN 1-561-71938-2.
  • Юрий Фельштинский, Алехандер Литвиненко ФСБ ВЗРЫВАЕТ РОССИЮ 2002 Full book in Russian

[edit] External links

• Russian Revenge? Summary of Litvinenko Story
• Litvinenko's Islamic Connections
• The Litvinenko Chronicles
• Putin "saddened" by recent events (National Nitwit)
• Terror99 - information on the Russian apartment bombings and books by Alexander Litvinenko
• Alexander Litvinenko at the Frontline Club accusing Vladimir Putin of the assassination of journalist Anna Politkovskaya (In Russian and English)
• 'Promise me you won't go back to Russia - or you will be the next' - an article by film-maker Andrei Nekrasov in The Times
• Crusade Media news
• "Disbelief (Loose change in Russia 1999)" - the Andrei Nekrasov documentary film about the 1999 bombing of a Moscow apartment building
• UKIP MEP Gerard Batten reveals information he claims to have received from Alexander Litvinenko
• "The Oligarchs" - former Knesset Member Uri Avnery on how Berezovsky et. al. amassed their wealth
• United Nuclear - an American company which legally sells small quantities of Polonium-210 online
• "Alexander Litvinenko lived and died in world of violence and betrayal" (International Herald Tribune)
• "The Nuclear Assassins" (Journalismus Nachrichten von heute)

Persondata
NAME	Litvinenko, Alexander
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Litvinenko, Alexander Valterovich; Russian: Литвиненко, Александр Вальтерович
SHORT DESCRIPTION	ex-KGB agent and FSB lieutenant-colonel
DATE OF BIRTH	1962
PLACE OF BIRTH	Voronezh, Russia
DATE OF DEATH	November 23, 2006
PLACE OF DEATH	London, England