Former Russian spy Litvinenko dead

LONDON: Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died on Thursday, doctors said, three weeks after being mysteriously poisoned in what critics alleged was a Soviet-style sting by Moscow's secret services, a charge denied by the Kremlin. 

 

"We are sorry to announce that Alexander Litvinenko died at University College Hospital at 9.21 on November 23," a spokesman for the hospital said.

 

"He was seriously ill when he was admitted on Friday November 17, and the medical team at the hospital did everything possible to save his life."   

 

The condition of the 43-year-old had worsened on Thursday, doctors and friends said, as he suffered a heart attack overnight Wednesday, and was fighting for his life.

 

His spokesman Alexander Goldfarb told television news broadcasters on Wednesday that his friend suffered an apparent cardiac arrest and a "catastrophic" fall in blood pressure.

 

He had been moved to intensive care on Sunday evening.   

 

Litvinenko, who was being treated under armed guard at the hospital, was a former lieutenant colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service -- the successor to the Soviet KGB.

 

His friends have in recent days blamed Russia for his apparent poisoning.   

 

Oleg Gordievsky, a former colonel in the KGB who defected to Britain in the mid-1980s, said there was "no doubt" that the Russian secret service was responsible for Litvinenko's death.

 

Gordievsky told the BBC he was "very angry that the Russian security service was... so evil," and described Russian President Vladimir Putin as "an international terrorist", soon after Litvinenko's death was confirmed. 

 

He alleged that Litvinenko was killed by a "very sophisticated poison developed in the secret laboratories of the KGB."   

 

In Helsinki, where Putin is to attend an EU-Russia summit on Friday, a source in the Russian delegation said late Thursday, just prior to news of the death: "Of course it's a human tragedy. A person was poisoned. But the accusations against the Kremlin are so incredible, so nonsense-like, so silly, that the president cannot comment."

 

London's Metropolitan Police said that "inquiries continue into the circumstances surrounding how Mr Litvinenko... became unwell" in a statement.

 

They added that the matter was being "investigated as an unexplained death" and not as a murder.

 

Litvinenko, a fierce critic of Putin, first began to feel ill on November 1, after having tea with two Russians at a central London hotel, followed by lunch at a London sushi bar with an Italian academic.   

 

One of the Russians, Andrei Lugovoi, told The Daily Telegraph on Friday that he thought he was being "set up", and said that he had given a statement to the British embassy in Moscow.

 

He said he was willing to speak to British police.   

 

According to The Times on Thursday, British police were hunting for the other man who accompanied Lugovoi to the meeting -- apparently identified by Litvinenko only as "Vladimir" -- whom they see as central to their investigation.

 

Lugovoi, however, told the Telegraph that there was no man named "Vladimir" present, and his associate was called Dmitry Kovtun.

 

Litvinenko's friends have also said that the Italian, Mario Scaramella, was not involved. Scaramella has said he will give a statement to the British embassy in Rome.   

 

The former spy told a friend on Tuesday that he wanted to survive the apparent poisoning "just to show them", referring to the Kremlin, the friend told The Times in an article published Friday.   

 

Speaking to Andrei Nekrosov, a friend and filmmaker, the ex spy apparently also made a joke at his own expense, saying: "This is what it takes to prove one has been telling the truth."   

 

He was referring to allegations made in his book Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, where Litvinenko said the secret service set up the 1999 Russian apartment block bombings, which prompted the second Chechen war and propelled the then little-known Putin to power.   

 

Litvinenko fled Russia and was granted asylum in Britain after accusing the FSB of plotting to kill the exiled Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky.

 

He recently became a British citizen.   

 

Doctors earlier ruled out an initial theory that the heavy metal thallium was responsible, said radioactivity was "unlikely" and dismissed a report three unidentified objects had been found in his intestines.   

 

Pictures from the hospital released earlier this week showed Litvinenko looking gaunt and weak, propped up on pillows wearing a green hospital robe, with his bald head tilted slightly and his eyes half open.