Alexander Litvinenko poisoning - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....

was a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, FSB and KGB, who escaped prosecution in Russia and received political asylum in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. He wrote two books, Blowing up Russia: Terror from within
Blowing up Russia: Terror from within
Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within is a book written by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky. The authors alleged that the Russian apartment bombings and other September 1999 terrorist acts were committed by the Federal Security Service...

and Lubyanka Criminal Group
Lubyanka Criminal Group
Lubyanka Criminal Group is a book by Alexander Litvinenko about the alleged transformation of the Russian Security Services into a criminal and terrorist organization.Lubyanka is known as KGB headquarters...

, where he accused the Russian secret services of staging Russian apartment bombings

Russian apartment bombings

The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing 293 people and injuring 651. The explosions occurred in Buynaksk on 4 September, Moscow on 9 and 13 September, and...

and other terrorism acts to bring Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...

to power.

On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later, becoming the first confirmed victim of lethal polonium-210

Polonium

Polonium is a chemical element with the symbol Po and atomic number 84, discovered in 1898 by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie. A rare and highly radioactive element, polonium is chemically similar to bismuth and tellurium, and it occurs in uranium ores. Polonium has been studied for...

-induced acute radiation syndrome

Radiation poisoning

Acute radiation syndrome also known as radiation poisoning, radiation sickness or radiation toxicity, is a constellation of health effects which occur within several months of exposure to high amounts of ionizing radiation...

. According to doctors, "Litvinenko's murder represents an ominous landmark: the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism

Nuclear terrorism

Nuclear terrorism denotes the use, or threat of the use, of nuclear weapons or radiological weapons in acts of terrorism, includingattacks against facilities where radioactive materials are present...

".

Litvinenko's allegations about the misdeeds of the FSB and his public deathbed accusations that Russian president Vladimir Putin were behind his unusual malady resulted in worldwide media coverage.

Subsequent investigations by British authorities into the circumstances of Litvinenko's death led to serious diplomatic difficulties between the British and Russian governments. Unofficially, British authorities asserted that "we are 100% sure who administered the poison, where and how", but they did not disclose their evidence in the interest of a future trial. The main suspect in the case, a former officer of the Russian Federal Protective Service (FSO), Andrei Lugovoy, remains in Russia. As a member of the Duma

Duma

A Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed during the reign of the...

, he now enjoys immunity from prosecution. Before he was elected to the Duma, the British government tried to extradite him without success.

Background

Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian Federal Security service who escaped prosecution in Russia and received political asylum in Great Britain. In his books, "Blowing up Russia: Terror from within
Blowing up Russia: Terror from within
Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within is a book written by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky. The authors alleged that the Russian apartment bombings and other September 1999 terrorist acts were committed by the Federal Security Service...

" and "Lubyanka Criminal Group
Lubyanka Criminal Group
Lubyanka Criminal Group is a book by Alexander Litvinenko about the alleged transformation of the Russian Security Services into a criminal and terrorist organization.Lubyanka is known as KGB headquarters...

", Litvinenko described Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin

's rise to power as a coup d'état

Coup d'état

A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

organised by the FSB. He alleged that a key element of FSB's strategy was to frighten Russians by bombing apartment buildings

Russian apartment bombings

in Moscow and other Russian cities. He accused Russian secret services of having arranged the Moscow theater hostage crisis

Moscow theater hostage crisis

The Moscow theater hostage crisis, also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege, was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater on 23 October 2002 by some 40 to 50 armed Chechens who claimed allegiance to the Islamist militant separatist movement in Chechnya. They took 850 hostages and demanded the...

, through their Chechen agent provocateur

Agent provocateur

Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act...

, and having organised the 1999 Armenian parliament shooting

1999 Armenian parliament shooting

The 1999 Armenian parliament shooting was an attack on the Armenian parliament in the capital Yerevan on October 27, 1999 at 5:15 p.m, by a group of armed men that killed the Prime Minister of Armenia and 7 other high ranking officials.-Shooting:...

,. He also stated that terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri

Ayman al-Zawahiri

Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri is an Egyptian physician, Islamic theologian and current leader of al-Qaeda. He was previously the second and last "emir" of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, having succeeded Abbud al-Zumar in the latter role when Egyptian authorities sentenced al-Zumar to life...

was under FSB control when he visited Russia in 1997.

Just two weeks before his death Litvinenko accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of ordering the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya

Anna Politkovskaya

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...

Illness and poisoning

On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill. Earlier that day he had met two former KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

officers, Andrei Lugovoi

Andrei Lugovoi

Andrey Konstantinovich Lugovoy is a Russian politician and businessman and deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation for the LDPR. He is a former KGB bodyguard and the ex-head of the security firm "Ninth Wave."...

and Dmitri Kovtun. Lugovoi is a former bodyguard of Russian ex-Prime Minister

Prime Minister of Russia

The Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation The use of the term "Prime Minister" is strictly informal and is not allowed for by the Russian Constitution and other laws....

Yegor Gaidar

Yegor Timurovich Gaidar was a Soviet and Russian economist, politician and author, and was the Acting Prime Minister of Russia from 15 June 1992 to 14 December 1992....

(also reportedly poisoned in November 2006) and former chief of security for the Russian TV channel ORT

Channel One (Russia)

Channel One is the first television channel to broadcast in the Soviet Union. The channel was renamed Ostankino Channel 1 in 1991, after the Soviet Union broke up and the Russian SFSR became the Russian Federation. According to a recent government publication, the Russian government controls 51%...

. Kovtun is now a businessman. Litvinenko had also had lunch at Itsu

Itsu

Itsu Ltd, previously Tsu, is a chain of sushi eat-in and take-away restaurants in London, England. There are restaurants at Canary Wharf, Chelsea, Notting Hill and Soho, plus a further twenty eight branches, with many providing a delivery service...

, a sushi

Sushi

is a Japanese food consisting of cooked vinegared rice combined with other ingredients . Neta and forms of sushi presentation vary, but the ingredient which all sushi have in common is shari...

restaurant on Piccadilly

Piccadilly

Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...

in London, with an Italian acquaintance and "nuclear waste expert", Mario Scaramella

Mario Scaramella

Mario Scaramella is an Italian lawyer, self-styled security consultant and nuclear waste expert who came to international prominence in 2006 in connection with the poisoning of the ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko...

, to whom he reportedly made allegations regarding Romano Prodi

Romano Prodi

Romano Prodi is an Italian politician and statesman. He served as the Prime Minister of Italy, from 17 May 1996 to 21 October 1998 and from 17 May 2006 to 8 May 2008...

's connections with the KGB. Scaramella, attached to the Mitrokhin Commission investigating KGB penetration of Italian politics, claimed to have information on the death of Anna Politkovskaya, 48, a journalist who was killed at her Moscow apartment in October 2006. He passed Litvinenko papers supposedly concerning her fate. On 20 November, it was reported that Scaramella had gone into hiding and feared for his life.

For several days after 1 November, Litvinenko experienced severe diarehha and vomiting. At one point, he could not walk without assistance. As the pain intensified, Litvinenko begged his wife to call an ambulance for assistance. For several weeks, Litvinenko's condition worsened as doctors searched for what caused the illness. Surrounded by friends, Litvinenko began to become physically weak, and spent periods unconscious. A photograph was taken of Litvinenko in his death bed and released to the public. "I want the world to see what they did to me," Litvinenko said.

The poison

Shortly after his death, the UK's Health Protection Agency

Health Protection Agency

The Health Protection Agency, or, in Welsh, Yr Asiantaeth Diogelu Iechyd is a statutory corporation. It is an independent UK organisation that was set up by the government in 2003 to protect the public from threats to their health from infectious diseases and environmental hazards...

(HPA) stated that tests had established Litvinenko had significant amounts of the radionuclide

Radionuclide

A radionuclide is an atom with an unstable nucleus, which is a nucleus characterized by excess energy available to be imparted either to a newly created radiation particle within the nucleus or to an atomic electron. The radionuclide, in this process, undergoes radioactive decay, and emits gamma...

polonium-210

Polonium

(²¹⁰Po) in his body. British and US government

Federal government of the United States

The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...

sources both said the use of ²¹⁰Po as a poison has never been documented before, and this was probably the first time a person has been tested for the presence of ²¹⁰Po in his or her body. The poison was in Litvinenko's tea cup. People who had contact with Litvinenko may also have been exposed to radiation.

Polonium was identified only after Litvinenko's death, on 23 November. Doctors and Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...

investigators could not detect polonium earlier because it does not emit gamma rays, which are encountered with most radioactive isotopes. Unlike most common radiation sources, polonium-210 emits only alpha particle

Alpha particle

Alpha particles consist of two protons and two neutrons bound together into a particle identical to a helium nucleus, which is classically produced in the process of alpha decay, but may be produced also in other ways and given the same name...

s that do not penetrate even a sheet of paper or the epidermis of human skin, thus being invisible to normal radiation detectors in this case. Hospitals only have equipment to detect gamma rays. Both gamma rays and alpha particles are classified as ionizing radiation

Ionizing radiation

Ionizing radiation is radiation composed of particles that individually have sufficient energy to remove an electron from an atom or molecule. This ionization produces free radicals, which are atoms or molecules containing unpaired electrons...

which can cause radiation damage

Radiation damage

Radiation damage is a term associated with ionizing radiation.-Causes:This radiation may take several forms:*Cosmic rays and subsequent energetic particles caused by their collision with the atmosphere and other materials....

. An alpha-emitting substance can cause significant damage only if ingested or inhaled, acting on living cells like a short-range weapon. Litvinenko was tested for alpha-emitters using special equipment only hours before his death.

Po-210 concentration in the body of Litvinenko

The symptoms seen in Litvinenko appeared consistent with an administered activity of approximately 2 GBq

Becquerel

The becquerel is the SI-derived unit of radioactivity. One Bq is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. The Bq unit is therefore equivalent to an inverse second, s−1...

(50 mCi) which corresponds to about 10 micrograms of ²¹⁰Po. That is 200 times the median lethal dose of around 238

Ci or 50 nanograms in the case of ingestion.

Thallium - initial hypothesis

Scotland Yard

initially investigated claims that Litvinenko was poisoned with thallium

Thallium

Thallium is a chemical element with the symbol Tl and atomic number 81. This soft gray poor metal resembles tin but discolors when exposed to air. The two chemists William Crookes and Claude-Auguste Lamy discovered thallium independently in 1861 by the newly developed method of flame spectroscopy...

. It was reported that early tests appeared to confirm the presence of the poison. Among the distinctive effects of thallium poisoning are hair loss and damage to peripheral nerves

Peripheral nervous system

The peripheral nervous system consists of the nerves and ganglia outside of the brain and spinal cord. The main function of the PNS is to connect the central nervous system to the limbs and organs. Unlike the CNS, the PNS is not protected by the bone of spine and skull, or by the blood–brain...

, and a photograph of Litvinenko in hospital, released to the media on his behalf, indeed showed his hair to have fallen out. Litvinenko attributed his initial survival to his cardiovascular fitness and swift medical treatment. It was later suggested a radioactive isotope

Isotope

Isotopes are variants of atoms of a particular chemical element, which have differing numbers of neutrons. Atoms of a particular element by definition must contain the same number of protons but may have a distinct number of neutrons which differs from atom to atom, without changing the designation...

of thallium might have been used to poison Litvinenko. Dr. Amit Nathwani, one of Litvinenko's physicians, said "His symptoms are slightly odd for thallium poisoning, and the chemical levels of thallium we were able to detect are not the kind of levels you'd see in toxicity." Litvinenko's condition deteriorated, and he was moved into intensive care

Intensive care medicine

Intensive-care medicine or critical-care medicine is a branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and management of life threatening conditions requiring sophisticated organ support and invasive monitoring.- Overview :...

on 20 November. Hours before his death, three unidentified circular-shaped objects were found in his stomach via an X-ray

X-ray

X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...

scan. It is thought these objects were almost certainly shadows caused by the presence of Prussian blue

Prussian blue

Prussian blue is a dark blue pigment with the idealized formula Fe718. Another name for the color Prussian blue is Berlin blue or, in painting, Parisian blue. Turnbull's blue is the same substance but is made from different reagents....

, the treatment he had been given for thallium poisoning.

Death and last statement

Late on November 22 and into the early morning of November 23, Litvinenko's heart failed. The official time of death was 9:21 P.M.at University College Hospital in London.

According to his father, Litvinenko, who was not a particularly religious person, converted to Islam on his deathbed.

Litvinenko's postmortem took place on 1 December.
Litvinenko had ingested polonium-210, a poisonous radioactive isotope.
Mario Scaramella, who had eaten with Litvinenko, reported that doctors had told him Litvinenko's body had five times the lethal dose of polonium-210.
Litvinenko's funeral reading took place on 7 December at the Central London mosque, after which his body was buried at Highgate Cemetery in North London

North London

North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...

.

On 25 November, an article attributed to Litvinenko was published by the Mail on Sunday Online

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

entitled Why I believe Putin wanted me dead... Strikingly, the only witness to the purported statement was Goldfarb, a representative of Boris Berezovsky. Also striking is the fact that a desperately ill man who hardly spoke sufficient English to order a cup of tea would be able to write a letter in beautiful, flowing English - or that he would choose to do so in English, rather than his native Russian.

In his last statement he said about Putin:

Initial steps

Greater London

Greater London is the top-level administrative division of England covering London. It was created in 1965 and spans the City of London, including Middle Temple and Inner Temple, and the 32 London boroughs. This territory is coterminate with the London Government Office Region and the London...

's Metropolitan Police Service

Metropolitan Police Service

The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...

Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

Unit has been investigating the poisoning and death. The head of the Counter-Terrorism Unit, Deputy Assistant Commissioner

Deputy Assistant Commissioner

Deputy assistant commissioner is a rank in London's Metropolitan Police Service between assistant commissioner and commander. It is equivalent to deputy chief constable in other British police forces and wears the same insignia: a pip above crossed tipstaves within a wreath.The rank was introduced...

Peter Clarke, stated the police "will trace possible witnesses, examine Mr. Litvinenko's movements at relevant times, including when he first became ill and identify people he may have met. There will also be an extensive examination of CCTV footage."
The United Kingdom Government COBRA committee met to discuss the investigation. Richard Kolko from the United States FBI stated "when requested by other nations, we provide assistance" - referring to the FBI now joining the investigation for their expertise on radioactive weapons. The Metropolitan Police announced on 6 December 2006 that it was treating Litvinenko's death as murder. Interpol

Interpol

Interpol, whose full name is the International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL, is an organization facilitating international police cooperation...

has also joined the investigation, providing "speedy exchange of information" between British, Russian and German police.

Polonium trails

Detectives traced three distinct polonium trails in and out of London. The trails were left by Litvinenko, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun

Dmitry Kovtun

Dmitry Vladimirovich Kovtun is a Russian businessman and ex-KGB agent who met the poisoned ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko several times in London, the last time hours before Litvinenko fell ill...

. The patterns and levels of radioactivity they left behind suggested that Litvinenko ingested polonium, whereas Lugovoi and Kovtun handled them directly. The human body dilutes the polonium before excreting in sweat, which results in a reduced radioactivity level.
There were also traces of Po-210 found at the "Hey Jo/Abracadabra" bar, "Dar Marrakesh" restaurant, and Lambeth-Mercedes taxis.

The poisoning of Litvinenko took place at around 5 p.m. of 1 November in the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square. The bus he travelled in to the hotel had no signs of radioactivity - but large amounts had been detected at the hotel. Polonium was subsequently found in a fourth-floor room and in a cup in the Pine Bar at the hotel. After the Millennium bar, Litvinenko stopped at the office of Boris Berezovsky. He used a fax machine, where the radioactivity was found later. At 6 p.m. Akhmed Zakayev

Akhmed Zakayev

Akhmed Khalidovich Zakayev is the former Deputy Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria , which is unrecognised by other countries...

picked Litvinenko up and brought him home to Muswell Hill. The amount of radioactivity left by Litvinenko in the car was so significant, the car was rendered unusable. Everything that he touched at home during next three days was contaminated. His family was unable to return to the house even six months later. His wife was tested positive for ingesting polonium but did not leave a secondary trail behind her. This suggested that anyone who left a trail could not have picked up the polonium from Litvinenko (possibly, including Lugovoy and Kovtun).

Besides Litvinenko, only two people left the polonium trails: Lugovoy and Kovtun who were school friends and worked previously for Russian intelligence in the KGB

KGB

and the GRU

GRU

GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...

respectively. These people handled the radioactive material directly and did not ingest it, because they left more significant traces of polonium than Litvinenko.

Lugovoy and Kovtun met Litvinenko in the Millennium hotel bar twice, on 1 November (when the poisoning took place), and earlier, on 16 October.
Trails left by Lugovoy and Kovtun started on 16 October, in the same sushi bar where Litvinenko was poisoned later, but at a different table. It was assumed that their first meeting with Litvinenko was either a rehearsal of the future poisoning, or an unsuccessful attempt of the poisoning.

Traces left by Lugovoy were also found in the office of Berezovsky that he visited on 31 October, a day before his second meeting with Litvinenko. Traces left by Kovtun were found in Hamburg, Germany. He left them on his way to London on 28 October-31. The traces were found in passenger jets BA875 and BA873 from Moscow to Heathrow on 25 October and 31 October, as well as flights BA872 and BA874 from Heathrow to Moscow on 28 October and 3 November.

Andrei Lugovoi has said he flew from London to Moscow on a 3 November flight. He stated he arrived in London on 31 October to attend the football

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

match between Arsenal

Arsenal F.C.

Arsenal Football Club is a professional English Premier League football club based in North London. One of the most successful clubs in English football, it has won 13 First Division and Premier League titles and 10 FA Cups...

and CSKA Moscow on 1 November. When the news broke that a radioactive substance had been used to murder Litvinenko, a team of scientists rushed to find out how far the contamination had spread. It led them on a trail involving hundreds of people and dozens of locations.

British Airways later published a list of 221 flights of the contaminated aircraft, involving around 33,000 passengers, and advised those potentially affected to contact the UK Department of Health

Department of Health (United Kingdom)

The Department of Health is a department of the United Kingdom government with responsibility for government policy for health and social care matters and for the National Health Service in England along with a few elements of the same matters which are not otherwise devolved to the Scottish,...

for help. On 5 December they issued an email to all of their customers, informing them that the aircraft had all been declared safe by the UK's Health Protection Agency and would be entering back into service.

British extradition request

British authorities investigated the death and it was reported on 1 December that scientists at the Atomic Weapons Establishment

Atomic Weapons Establishment

The Atomic Weapons Establishment is responsible for the design, manufacture and support of warheads for the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent. AWE plc is responsible for the day-to-day operations of AWE...

had traced the source of the polonium to a nuclear power plant

Nuclear power plant

A nuclear power plant is a thermal power station in which the heat source is one or more nuclear reactors. As in a conventional thermal power station the heat is used to generate steam which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator which produces electricity.Nuclear power plants are usually...

in Russia. On 3 December, reports stated that Britain has demanded the right to speak to at least five Russians implicated in Litvinenko's death, and Russian Foreign Minister

Foreign Minister of Russia

This is a list of foreign ministers of Tsardom of Russia, Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and Russian Federation.-Heads of Posolsky Prikaz, 1549-1699:*Ivan Viskovatyi 1549-62*Andrey Vasilyev 1562-1570*Brothers Vasily and Andrey Shchelkalov 1570-1601...

Sergey Lavrov

Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov is the Foreign Minister of Russia. Prior to that, Lavrov was a Soviet diplomat and Russia's ambassador to the United Nations from 1994 to 2004. Lavrov speaks Russian, English, French and Sinhala....

asserted that Moscow was willing to answer "concrete questions." Russian Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika

Yury Chaika

Yury Yakovlevich Chaika is the current Prosecutor General of Russia.-Career:Chaika began his career as an electrician in a shipyard. After serving in the army, he graduated from Sverdlovsk Institute of Law in 1976 and began work at Irkutsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office where he served as an...

said on Tuesday, 5 December that any Russian citizen who may be charged in the poisoning will be tried in Russia, not Britain. Moreover, Chaika stated that UK detectives may ask questions to Russian citizens only in the presence of Russian prosecutors.

On 28 May 2007 the British Foreign Office submitted a formal request to the Russian Government for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi to the UK to face criminal charges relating to Litvinenko's murder.

Extradition declined

Russian General Prosecutor's Office declined to extradite Lugovoi, citing that extradition of citizens is not allowed under the Russian constitution (Article 61 of the Constitution of Russia

Constitution of Russia

The current Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted by national referendum on 12 December 1993. Russia's constitution came into force on 25 December 1993, at the moment of its official publication...

). Russian authorities later said that Britain has not handed over any evidence against Lugovoi. Professor Daniel Tarschys

Daniel Tarschys

Nils Daniel Tarschys, , is a professor of political science at Stockholm University.Tarschys was born into an academic family. Both his parents taught in Swedish universities. He is married and has two daughters....

, former Secretary General of the Council of Europe

Secretary General of the Council of Europe

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe is appointed by the Parliamentary Assembly on the recommendation of the Committee of Ministers for a period of five years...

, commented that Russian Constitution actually "opens the door" for the extradition, and Russia ratified three international treaties on extradition (on 10 December 1999); namely, the European Convention on Extradition and two Additional Protocols to it.
Yury Fedotov, Ambassador of the Russian Federation, pointed out that when the Russian Federation ratified the European Convention on Extradition it entered a declaration concerning Article 6 in these terms: "The Russian Federation declares that in accordance with Article 61 (part 1) of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, a citizen of the Russian Federation may not be extradited to another state." The same protections are extended to the citizens of France and Germany, both of which refuse to extradite their citizens.

A BBC programme

On 7 July 2008, a British security source told the BBC's Newsnight

Newsnight

Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....

programme: "We very strongly believe the Litvinenko case to have had some state involvement. There are very strong indications." The British government claimed that no intelligence or security officials were authorised to comment on the case.

Possibly related events

On 2 March 2007 Paul Joyal

Paul Joyal

Paul M. Joyal is an American security analyst and media commentator who frequently comments on political and security matters concerning Russia and former Soviet countries...

, a former director of security for the U.S. Senate intelligence committee, who the previous weekend alleged on national television that the Kremlin was involved in the poisoning of Litvinenko, was shot near his Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

home. An FBI spokesman said the agency was "assisting" the police investigation into the shooting. Police would not confirm details of the shooting or of the condition of Joyal, a person familiar with the case said he was in critical condition

Critical Condition

Critical condition is a medical state.Critical Condition may also be:* Critical Condition , an episode of the television series Sex and the City* Critical Condition , a 1987 comedy film...

in hospital. It was reported that while there were no indications that the shooting was linked to the Litvinenko case, it is unusual for the FBI to get involved in a local shooting incident. A person familiar with the situation said NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

had hired bodyguards for some of the journalists involved in the program.

Sources and production of polonium

A freelance killer would not be able to obtain polonium legally from commercially available products in the amounts used for Litvinenko poisoning, because more than microscopic amounts of polonium can only be produced in state-controlled nuclear reactor

Nuclear reactor

A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...

s. (see also commercial products containing polonium for detail).

Ninety seven percent of the world's legal polonium-210 (²¹⁰Po) production occurs in Russia in RBMK

RBMK

RBMK is an initialism for the Russian reaktor bolshoy moshchnosti kanalniy which means "High Power Channel-type Reactor", and describes a class of graphite-moderated nuclear power reactor which was built in the Soviet Union. The RBMK reactor was the type involved in the Chernobyl disaster...

reactors About 85 grams (450,000 Ci) are produced by Russia annually. According to Sergei Kiriyenko

Sergei Kiriyenko

Sergey Vladilenovich Kiriyenko is a Russian politician. He served as the Prime Minister of Russia from 23 March to 23 August 1998 under President Boris Yeltsin...

, the head of Russia's state atomic energy agency, RosAtom, all of it goes to U.S. companies through a single authorized supplier. The production of polonium starts from bombardment of bismuth

Bismuth

Bismuth is a chemical element with symbol Bi and atomic number 83. Bismuth, a trivalent poor metal, chemically resembles arsenic and antimony. Elemental bismuth may occur naturally uncombined, although its sulfide and oxide form important commercial ores. The free element is 86% as dense as lead...

(²⁰⁹Bi) with neutron

Neutron

The neutron is a subatomic hadron particle which has the symbol or , no net electric charge and a mass slightly larger than that of a proton. With the exception of hydrogen, nuclei of atoms consist of protons and neutrons, which are therefore collectively referred to as nucleons. The number of...

s at the Ozersk

Ozyorsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast

Ozyorsk or Ozersk is a closed town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. Population: It was founded on the shore of the Irtyash Lake in 1945...

nuclear reactor, near the city of Chelyabinsk

Chelyabinsk

Chelyabinsk is a city and the administrative center of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located in the northwestern side of the oblast, south of Yekaterinburg, just to the east of the Ural Mountains, on the Miass River. Population: -History:...

in Russia. The product is then transferred to the Avangard Electromechanical Plant in the closed city

Closed city

A closed city or closed town is a settlement with travel and residency restrictions in the Soviet Union and some of its successor countries. In modern Russia, such places are officially known as "closed administrative-territorial formations" ....

of Sarov

Sarov

Sarov is a closed town in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia. Until 1995 it was known as Kremlyov ., while from 1946 to 1991 it was called Arzamas-16 . The town is off limits to foreigners as it is the Russian center for nuclear research. Population: -History:The history of the town can be divided...

. This of course does not exclude the possibility that the polonium that killed Litvinenko was imported by a licensed commercial distributor, but no one—including the Russian government—has proposed that this is likely, particularly in regard to the radiation detected on the British Airways

British Airways

British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...

passenger jets travelling between Moscow and London. Russian investigators have said they could not identify the source of polonium.

Polonium-210 has a half-life

Half-life

Half-life, abbreviated t½, is the period of time it takes for the amount of a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half. The name was originally used to describe a characteristic of unstable atoms , but it may apply to any quantity which follows a set-rate decay.The original term, dating to...

of 138 days and decays to the stable daughter isotope of lead

Lead

Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...

, ²⁰⁶Pb. Therefore the source is reduced to about one sixteenth of its original radioactivity about 18 months after production. By measuring the proportion of polonium and lead in a sample, one can establish the production date of polonium. The analysis of impurities in the polonium (a kind of "finger print") allows to identify the place of production. It is assumed by Litvinenko's wife and his close confidant that British investigators were able to identify the place and time of production of polonium used to poison Litvinenko, but their findings remain unpublished.

Possible motivation for using polonium-210

Philip Walker, professor of physics at the University of Surrey

University of Surrey

The University of Surrey is a university located within the county town of Guildford, Surrey in the South East of England. It received its charter on 9 September 1966, and was previously situated near Battersea Park in south-west London. The institution was known as Battersea College of Technology...

said: "This seems to have been a substance carefully chosen for its ability to be hard to detect in a person who has ingested it." Oleg Gordievsky

Oleg Gordievsky

Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky , CMG , is a former Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate and bureau chief in London, who was a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985.-Early career:Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International...

, the most senior KGB agent ever to defect to Britain, made a similar comment
that Litvinenko's assassination was carefully prepared and rehearsed by Russian secret services, but the poisoners were unaware that technology existed to detect traces left by polonium-210: "Did you know that polonium-210 leaves traces? I didn’t. And no one did. ...what they didn’t know was that this equipment, this technology exists in the West – they didn’t know that, and that was where they miscalculated."

Nick Priest, a nuclear scientist and expert on polonium who has worked at most of Russia's nuclear research facilities, says that although the execution of the plot was a "bout of stupidity", the choice of polonium was a "stroke of genius". He says: "the choice of poison was genius in that polonium, carried in a vial in water, can be carried in a pocket through airport screening devices without setting off any alarms", adding, "once administered, the polonium creates symptoms that don't suggest poison for days, allowing time for the perpetrator to make a getaway." Priest asserts that "whoever did it was probably not an expert in radiation protection, so they probably didn't realize how much contamination you can get just by opening the top (of the vial) and closing it again. With the right equipment, you can detect just one count per second".

Filmmaker and friend of Litvinenko, Andrei Nekrasov

Andrei Nekrasov

Andrei Lvovich Nekrasov is a Russian film and TV director from Saint Petersburg.Andrei Nekrasov studied acting and directing at the State Institute for Theater and Film in his native Saint Petersburg. He studied comparative literature and philosophy at the University of Paris, taking a master's...

, has suggested that the poison was "sadistically designed to trigger a slow, tortuous [sic] and spectacular demise". Expert on Russia Paul Joyal

Paul Joyal

Paul M. Joyal is an American security analyst and media commentator who frequently comments on political and security matters concerning Russia and former Soviet countries...

suggested that "A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin.... If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you, in the most horrible way possible".

Theories

Many theories of Litvinenko poisoning circulated after his death. Many circumstances led to suspicion that he was killed by the Russian secret service

Secret service

A secret service describes a government agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For instance, a country may establish a secret service which has some...

.
Viktor Ilyukhin, a deputy chairman of the Russian Parliament's security committee for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation

Communist Party of the Russian Federation

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a Russian political party. It is the second major political party in the Russian Federation.-History:...

, said that he "can’t exclude that possibility"
He apparently referred to a recent Russian counter-terrorism

Counter-terrorism

Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...

law that gives the President the right to order such actions.
An investigator of the Russian apartment bombings

Russian apartment bombings

, Mikhail Trepashkin

Mikhail Trepashkin

Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin, is a Moscow attorney and former FSB colonel who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 – the atrocities that followed Dagestan war and were one of the triggers for the Second Chechen...

wrote in a letter from prison that an FSB team had organised in 2002 to kill Litvinenko. He also reported FSB plans to kill relatives of Litvinenko in Moscow in 2002, although these have not been carried out. State Duma

State Duma

The State Duma , common abbreviation: Госду́ма ) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia , the upper house being the Federation Council of Russia. The Duma headquarters is located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to...

member Sergei Abeltsev

Sergei Abeltsev

Sergey Nikolayevich Abeltsev is a member of the State Duma of Russia and a former bodyguard of Vladimir Zhirinovsky. He has been a member of the State Duma's Committee on National Security since December 2003 and a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Prior to his election to the...

commented on 24 November 2006: said: "The deserved punishment reached the traitor. I am confident that this terrible death will be a serious warning to traitors of all colors, wherever they are located: In Russia, they do not pardon treachery. I would recommend citizen Berezovsky to avoid any food at the commemoration for his accomplice Litvinenko."

Many publications in Russian media suggested that the death of Litvinenko was connected to Boris Berezovsky. Former FSB chief Nikolay Kovalyov, for whom Litvinenko worked, said that the incident "looks like [the] hand of Berezovsky. I am sure that no kind of intelligence services

Intelligence agency

An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...

participated." This involvement of Berezovsky was alleged by numerous Russian television shows.

An explanation put forward by the Russian Government appeared to be that the deaths of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya were intended to embarrass President Putin. Other theories included involvement of rogue FSB members or suggestions that Litvinenko was killed because of his research of certain Russian corporations or state officials, or as a political intrigue to undermine president Putin

Suspects

Andrei Lugovoi

: A former Federal Protective Service of Russia officer and millionaire who met with Litvinenko on the day he fell ill (1 November). He had visited London at least three times in the month before Litvinenko's death and met with the victim four times. Traces of polonium-210 have been discovered in all three hotels where Lugovoi stayed after flying to London on 16 October, and in the Pescatori restaurant in Dover Street, Mayfair, where Mr Lugovoi is understood to have dined before 1 November; and aboard two aircraft on which he had travelled. He has declined to say whether he had been contaminated with polonium-210. The Crown Prosecution Service

Crown Prosecution Service

The Crown Prosecution Service, or CPS, is a non-ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for public prosecutions of people charged with criminal offences in England and Wales. Its role is similar to that of the longer-established Crown Office in Scotland, and the...

has charged him with murder and has sent an extradition request to Russia that includes a summary of the evidence, but the only third party to have seen the extradition request, American journalist Edward Epstein

Edward Jay Epstein

Edward Jay Epstein is an American investigative journalist. While a graduate student at Cornell University in 1966, he published the book Inquest, an influential criticism of the Warren Commission probe into the John F. Kennedy assassination...

, has described the substantiation as "embarrassingly thin".
Dmitry Kovtun

Dmitry Kovtun

Dmitry Vladimirovich Kovtun is a Russian businessman and ex-KGB agent who met the poisoned ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko several times in London, the last time hours before Litvinenko fell ill...

: A Russian businessman and ex-KGB agent who met Litvinenko in London first in mid-October and then on 1 November, the day Litvinenko fell ill. On 7 December Kovtun was hospitalized, with some sources initially reporting him to be in coma. On 9 December, German police found traces of radiation at a Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

flat used by Kovtun. The following day, 10 December, German investigators identified the detected material as polonium-210

Polonium

and clarified that the substance was found where Kovtun had slept the night before departing for London. British police also report having detected polonium on the plane in which Kovtun travelled from Moscow. Three other points in Hamburg were identified as contaminated with the same substance. On 12 December Kovtun told Russia's Channel One TV that his "health was improving".

Kovtun was under investigation by German detectives for suspected plutonium

Plutonium

Plutonium is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with the chemical symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, forming a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation...

smuggling

Smuggling

Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...

into Germany in October. Germany dropped the case against Kovtun on November 2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6915002.ece

Vyacheslav Sokolenko : A business partner of Andrei Lugovoi.
Vladislav : The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

stated that the police have identified the man they believe may have poisoned Litvinenko

Alexander Litvinenko

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....

with a fatal polonium dose in a cup of tea on the fourth-floor room at the Millennium Hotel to discuss a business deal with Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi before going to the bar. These three men were joined in the room later by the mystery figure who was introduced as Vladislav, a man, who could help Litvinenko win a lucrative contract with a Moscow-based private security firm.

Vladislav is said to have arrived in London from Hamburg on 1 November on the same flight as Dmitry Kovtun. His image is recorded by security cameras at Heathrow airport on arrival. He is described as being in his early 30s, tall, strong, with short black hair and Central Asian features. Oleg Gordievsky

Oleg Gordievsky

, an ex-KGB agent, has said that this man was believed to have used a Lithuanian or Slovak passport, and that he left the country using another EU passport. He has also said Vladislav started his preparations in early 2006, "some time between February and April", that he "travelled to London, walked everywhere, and studied everything."

Businessman and politician Boris Berezovsky said in a police interview that "Sasha mentioned some person who he met at Millennium Hotel", but would not "remember whether [his name] was Vladimir or Vyacheslav." Litvinenko's friend Alex Goldfarb writes that according to Litvinenko, "Lugovoy brought along a man whom [Litvinenko] had never seen before and who had 'the eyes of a killer.'"

Igor the Assassin

Igor the Assassin is an SVR and former KGB officer who allegedly killed Alexander Litvinenko and escaped back to Russia. According to one version of the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning, the official suspect of the murder, Andrei Lugovoi, only distracted the attention of Litvinenko, while "Igor the...

: The code name for a former KGB

KGB

assassin. He is said to be a former Spetznaz officer born in 1960 who is a Judo

Judo

is a modern martial art and combat sport created in Japan in 1882 by Jigoro Kano. Its most prominent feature is its competitive element, where the object is to either throw or takedown one's opponent to the ground, immobilize or otherwise subdue one's opponent with a grappling maneuver, or force an...

master and walks with a slight limp. He allegedly speaks perfect English and Portuguese and may be the same person who served Litvinenko tea in the London hotel room.

Leonid Nevzlin

Leonid Nevzlin

Leonid Borisovich Nevzlin is a Russian-Israeli businessman. Nevzlin was a high ranking executive at Yukos, once a Russian oil firm before it was extinguished by the Russian government. That government is requesting his extradition due to hotly disputed criminal allegations against him and other...

: A businessman living in Israel has been accused by Russian Procurator's office of links to several murders in Russia and was one of the key figures in the Yukos oil company

YUKOS

OJSC "Yukos Oil Company" was a petroleum company in Russia which, until 2003, was controlled by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and a number of other prominent Russian businessmen. After Yukos was bankrupted, Khodorkovsky was convicted and sent to prison.Yukos headquarters was located in...

Other persons related to the case

Yegor Gaidar

Yegor Timurovich Gaidar was a Soviet and Russian economist, politician and author, and was the Acting Prime Minister of Russia from 15 June 1992 to 14 December 1992....

: The sudden illness of Yegor Gaidar

Yegor Gaidar

Yegor Timurovich Gaidar was a Soviet and Russian economist, politician and author, and was the Acting Prime Minister of Russia from 15 June 1992 to 14 December 1992....

in Ireland on 24 November, the day of Litvinenko's death, has been linked to his visit to the restaurant where polonium was present and is being investigated as part of the overall investigation in the UK and Ireland., Other observers noted he was probably poisoned after drinking a strange-tasting cup of tea

Tea

Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...

. Gaidar was taken to hospital; doctors said his condition is not life-threatening and that he will recover. This incident was similar to the poisoning of Anna Politkovskaya

Anna Politkovskaya

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...

on a flight to Beslan

Beslan

Beslan is a town and the administrative center of Pravoberezhny District of the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, Russia. In terms of population, Beslan is the third largest town in the republic behind Vladikavkaz and Mozdok...

. After poisoning, Gaidar claimed that it was enemies of Kremlin who tried to poison him.

Mario Scaramella

Mario Scaramella

: The United Kingdom's Health Protection Agency

Health Protection Agency

(HPA) announced that significant quantities of polonium-210 had been found in Mario Scaramella

Mario Scaramella

although his health was found to be normal. He has been admitted to hospital for tests and monitoring. Doctors say that Scaramella was exposed to a much lower level of polonium-210 than Litvinenko had been exposed to, and that preliminary tests found "no evidence of radiation toxicity". According to the 6 pm Channel 4 (9 December 2006) news the intake of polonium he suffered will only result in a dose of 1 mSv. This will lead to a 1 in 20000 chance of cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

. According to The Independent, Scaramella alleged that Litvinenko was involved in smuggling radioactive material to Zürich in 2000.

Boris Volodarsky, a KGB defector residing in London, stated that Evgeni Limarev, another former KGB officer residing in France, continued collaboration with FSB, infiltrated Litvinenko's and Scaramella's circles of trust and misinformed the latter.

Igor Ponomarev

Igor Ponomarev , was the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the International Maritime Organization and Chairman of the Maritime Safety Committee since 2003...

: Igor Ponomarev was a Russian diplomat whose death was named a possible murder by Paolo Guzzanti

Paolo Guzzanti

Paolo Guzzanti is an Italian journalist and politician. He was previously a member of the Italian Socialist Party.-Biography:Born in Rome, he is the nephew of Elio Guzzanti and father to actors Corrado, Sabina and Caterina....

Marina Litvinenko : UK reports state Litvinenko's widow tested positive for polonium, though she is not seriously ill. The Ashdown Park hotel in Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

has been evacuated as a precaution, possibly to do with Scaramella's previous visit there. According to the 6 pm Channel 4 (9 December 2006) news the intake of polonium she suffered will only result in a dose of 100 mSv. This will lead to a 1 in 200 chance of cancer

Cancer

.

Akhmed Zakayev

Akhmed Zakayev

Akhmed Khalidovich Zakayev is the former Deputy Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria , which is unrecognised by other countries...

: The forensic investigation

Forensics

Forensic science is the application of a broad spectrum of sciences to answer questions of interest to a legal system. This may be in relation to a crime or a civil action...

also includes the silver Mercedes by Litvinenko's home believed to be owned by his close friend and neighbour Akhmed Zakayev

Akhmed Zakayev

Akhmed Khalidovich Zakayev is the former Deputy Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria , which is unrecognised by other countries...

, then foreign minister

Foreign minister

A Minister of Foreign Affairs, or foreign minister, is a cabinet minister who helps form the foreign policy of a sovereign state. The foreign minister is often regarded as the most senior ministerial position below that of the head of government . It is often granted to the deputy prime minister in...

of the separatist government in exile

Government in exile

A government in exile is a political group that claims to be a country's legitimate government, but for various reasons is unable to exercise its legal power, and instead resides in a foreign country. Governments in exile usually operate under the assumption that they will one day return to their...

of Ichkeria

Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is the unrecognized secessionist government of Chechnya. The republic was proclaimed in late 1991 by Dzokhar Dudayev, and fought two devastating wars between separatists and the Russian Federation which denounced secession...

. Reports now state that traces of radioactive material were found in the vehicle.

British Police : Two London Metropolitan police

Metropolitan police

Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...

officers tested positive for ²¹⁰Po poisoning.

Bar staff : Some of the bar staff at the hotel where the polonium contaminated teacup

Teacup

A teacup is a small cup, with or without a handle, generally a small one that may be grasped with the thumb and one or two fingers. It is typically made of a ceramic material. It is usually part of a set, composed of a cup and a matching saucer. These in turn may be part of a tea set in...

was found were discovered to have suffered an intake of polonium (dose in the range of 10s of mSv). These people include Norberto Andrade, the head barman of the bar and a long-time (27 years) worker at the hotel. He has described the situation thus:

"When I was delivering gin and tonic to the table, I was obstructed. I couldn't see what was happening, but it seemed very deliberate to create a distraction. It made it difficult to put the drink down."

"It was the only moment when the situation seemed unfriendly and something went on at that point. I think the polonium was sprayed into the teapot. There was contamination found on the picture above where Mr Litvinenko had been sitting and all over the table, chair and floor, so it must have been a spray."

"When I poured the remains of the teapot into the sink, the tea looked more yellow than usual and was thicker - it looked gooey."

"I scooped it out of the sink and threw it into the bin. I was so lucky I didn't put my fingers into my mouth, or scratch my eye as I could have got this poison inside me."

Background history

7 June 1994: A remote-controlled bomb detonated aiming at chauffeured Mercedes 600 with oligarch Boris Berezovsky and his bodyguard in the rear seat. Driver died but Berezovsky left the car unscathed. Litvinenko, then with the organized-crime unit of the FSB, was an investigating officer of the assassination attempt
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...

. The case was never solved, but it was at this point that Litvinenko befriended Berezovsky.
17 November 1998: At a time that Vladimir Putin was the head of the FSB, five officers including Lieutenant-Colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...

Litvinenko accuse the Director of the Directorate for the Analysis of Criminal Organizations Major-General
Major General
Major general or major-general is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. A major general is a high-ranking officer, normally subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the ranks of brigadier and brigadier general...

Eugeny Hoholkhov and his deputy, 1st Rank Captain Alexander Kamishnikov, of ordering them to assassinate Boris Berezovsky in November 1997.

October 2006

7 October: The Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...

is shot in Moscow.
16 October: Andrei Lugovoi flies to London.
16 October-18 October: Former KGB agent Dmitry Kovtun visits London, during which time he eats two meals with Litvinenko, one of them at the Itsu sushi bar (see 1 November 2006).
17 October: Litvinenko visits "Risc Management", a security firm in Cavendish Place, with Lugovoi and Kovtun.
19 October: Litvinenko accuses President Putin of the Politkovskaya murder.
28 October: Dmitry Kovtun arrived in Hamburg, Germany from Moscow on an Aeroflot
Aeroflot
OJSC AeroflotRussian Airlines , commonly known as Aeroflot , is the flag carrier and largest airline of the Russian Federation, based on passengers carried per year...

flight. Later German police discovered that the passenger seat of the car that picked him up at an airport was contaminated with Polonium-210.
31 October: Dmitry Kovtun comes to London from Hamburg, Germany. German police found that his ex-wife's apartment in Hamburg was contaminated with polonium-210.

November 2006

1 November: Just after 3 p.m., at the Itsu
Itsu
Itsu Ltd, previously Tsu, is a chain of sushi eat-in and take-away restaurants in London, England. There are restaurants at Canary Wharf, Chelsea, Notting Hill and Soho, plus a further twenty eight branches, with many providing a delivery service...

sushi restaurant on Picadilly, Litvinenko meets the Italian security expert Mario Scaramella
Mario Scaramella
Mario Scaramella is an Italian lawyer, self-styled security consultant and nuclear waste expert who came to international prominence in 2006 in connection with the poisoning of the ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko...

, who hands alleged evidence to him concerning the murder of Politkovskaya. Around 4:15 p.m., he comes to the office of Boris Berezovsky to copy the papers Scaramella had given him and hand them to Berezovsky. Around 5 p.m. he meets with the former KGB agents Andrei Lugovoi, Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko in the Millennium Hotel in London. He later becomes ill.
3 November: Litvinenko is brought into Barnet General Hospital
Barnet General Hospital
Barnet Hospital, formerly called Barnet General Hospital, is a hospital in Barnet, north London, run by Barnet and Chase Farm NHS Hospitals Trust as part of the National Health Service.-Overview:...

.
11 November: Litvinenko tells the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

he was poisoned and is in very bad condition.
17 November: Litvinenko is moved to University College Hospital
University College Hospital
University College Hospital is a teaching hospital located in London, United Kingdom. It is part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is closely associated with University College London ....

and placed under armed guard.
19 November: Reports emerge that Litvinenko has been poisoned with thallium, a chemical element
Chemical element
A chemical element is a pure chemical substance consisting of one type of atom distinguished by its atomic number, which is the number of protons in its nucleus. Familiar examples of elements include carbon, oxygen, aluminum, iron, copper, gold, mercury, and lead.As of November 2011, 118 elements...

used in the past as a rat poison
Rat poison
Rodenticides are a category of pest control chemicals intended to kill rodents.Single feed baits are chemicals sufficiently dangerous that the first dose is sufficient to kill....

.
20 November: Litvinenko is moved to the Intensive Care Unit
Intensive Care Unit
thumb|220px|ICU roomAn intensive-care unit , critical-care unit , intensive-therapy unit/intensive-treatment unit is a specialized department in a hospital that provides intensive-care medicine...

. The police take statements from people with close relation to Litvinenko. A Kremlin
Kremlin
A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...

speaker denies the Russian government is involved in the poisoning.
22 November: The hospital announces that Litvinenko's condition has worsened substantially.
23 November: 9:21 p.m.: Litvinenko dies.
24 November: Litvinenko's dictated deathbed statement is published. He accuses President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for his death. The Kremlin
Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin , sometimes referred to as simply The Kremlin, is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River , Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square and the Alexander Garden...

rejects the accusation. The HPA
Health Protection Agency
The Health Protection Agency, or, in Welsh, Yr Asiantaeth Diogelu Iechyd is a statutory corporation. It is an independent UK organisation that was set up by the government in 2003 to protect the public from threats to their health from infectious diseases and environmental hazards...

announces that significant amounts of Polonium-210 have been found in Litvinenko's body. Traces of the same substance are also found at Litvinenko's house in North London
North London
North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...

, at Itsu
Itsu
Itsu Ltd, previously Tsu, is a chain of sushi eat-in and take-away restaurants in London, England. There are restaurants at Canary Wharf, Chelsea, Notting Hill and Soho, plus a further twenty eight branches, with many providing a delivery service...

and at the Millennium Hotel.
24 November: Sergei Abeltsev
Sergei Abeltsev
Sergey Nikolayevich Abeltsev is a member of the State Duma of Russia and a former bodyguard of Vladimir Zhirinovsky. He has been a member of the State Duma's Committee on National Security since December 2003 and a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Prior to his election to the...

, State Duma
State Duma
The State Duma , common abbreviation: Госду́ма ) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia , the upper house being the Federation Council of Russia. The Duma headquarters is located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to...

member from the LDPR, in his Duma address he commented on the death of Litvinenko with the following words: The deserved punishment reached the traitor. I am sure his terrible death will be a warning to all the traitors that in Russia the treason is not to be forgiven. I would recommend to citizen Berezovsky to avoid any food at the commemoration for his crime accomplice Litvinenko
24 November: The British police
Policing in the United Kingdom
Law enforcement in the United Kingdom is organised separately in each of the legal systems of the United Kingdom: England & Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland ....

state they are investigating the death as a possible poisoning.
28 November: Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...

announces that traces of Polonium-210 have been found in seven different places in London. Among them, an office of the Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, an avowed opponent of Putin.
29 November: The HPA announces screening of the nurses and physicians who treated Litvinenko. The authorities find traces of a radioactive substance on board British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...

planes.
30 November: Polonium-210 traces are found on a number of other planes, most of them going to Moscow.

December 2006

1 December: An autopsy
Autopsy
An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...

is performed on the body of Litvinenko. Toxicology
Toxicology
Toxicology is a branch of biology, chemistry, and medicine concerned with the study of the adverse effects of chemicals on living organisms...

results from Mr Litvinenko's post-mortem examination
Autopsy
An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...

revealed two "spikes" of radiation poisoning, suggesting he received two separate doses. Scaramella tests positive for Polonium-210 and is admitted into a hospital. Litvinenko's widow also tests positive for Polonium-210, but was not sent to the hospital for treatment.
2 December: Scotland Yard's counter-terrorist unit have questioned Yuri Shvets
Yuri Shvets
Yuri B. Shvets was a Major in the KGB during the years 1980-1990. From April 1985 to 1987 he worked in the Washington Rezidentura of the KGB....

, a former KGB spy who emigrated to the United States in 1993. He was questioned as a witness in Washington in the presence of FBI officers. Shvets claimed that he has a "lead that can explain what happened".
6 December: Scotland Yard announced that it is treating his death as a murder.
7 December: Confused reports state that Dmitry Kovtun was hospitalized, the reason has not yet been made clear.
7 December: Russian Office of the Prosecutor General
Prosecutor General of Russia
The Prosecutor General of Russia heads the system of official prosecution in courts known as the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russian Federation ....

has opened a criminal case over poisoning of Litvinenko and Kovtun by the articles "Murder committed in a way endangering the general public" (убийство, совершенное общеопасным способом) and "Attempted murder of two or more persons committed in a way endangering the general public".
8 December: Kovtun is reported to be in coma.
9 December: German police find traces of radiation at Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

flat used by Kovtun.
9 December: UK police identify a single cup at the Pines Bar in the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair
Mayfair
Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...

which was almost certainly the one used to administer the poison.
11 December: Andrei Lugovoi is interrogated in Moscow by UK Scotland Yard and General Procurator's office of the Russian Federation. He refuses to reveal any information concerning the interrogation.
12 December: Dmitry Kovtun tells a Russian TV station that his "health [is] improving".
24 December: Mario Scaramella was arrested in Naples on his return from London, on apparently unrelated charges.
27 December: Prosecutor General of Russia Yury Chaika
Yury Chaika
Yury Yakovlevich Chaika is the current Prosecutor General of Russia.-Career:Chaika began his career as an electrician in a shipyard. After serving in the army, he graduated from Sverdlovsk Institute of Law in 1976 and began work at Irkutsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office where he served as an...

accused Leonid Nevzlin
Leonid Nevzlin
Leonid Borisovich Nevzlin is a Russian-Israeli businessman. Nevzlin was a high ranking executive at Yukos, once a Russian oil firm before it was extinguished by the Russian government. That government is requesting his extradition due to hotly disputed criminal allegations against him and other...

, a former Vice President of Yukos
YUKOS
OJSC "Yukos Oil Company" was a petroleum company in Russia which, until 2003, was controlled by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and a number of other prominent Russian businessmen. After Yukos was bankrupted, Khodorkovsky was convicted and sent to prison.Yukos headquarters was located in...

, exiled in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

and wanted by Russian authorities for a long time, of involvement in the poisoning, a charge dismissed by the latter as a nonsense.

February 2007

5 February: Boris Berezovsky told the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

that on his deathbed, Litvinenko said that Lugovoi was responsible for his poisoning.
6 February: The text of a letter written by Litvinenko's widow on 31 January to Putin, demanding that Putin work with British authorities on solving the case, was released.
8 February 2007: Update to HPA (Health Protection Agency
Health Protection Agency
The Health Protection Agency, or, in Welsh, Yr Asiantaeth Diogelu Iechyd is a statutory corporation. It is an independent UK organisation that was set up by the government in 2003 to protect the public from threats to their health from infectious diseases and environmental hazards...

) investigation of Polonium 210 incident.

May 2007

21 May: Sir Ken Macdonald QC (Director of Public Prosecutions
Director of Public Prosecutions
The Director of Public Prosecutions is the officer charged with the prosecution of criminal offences in several criminal jurisdictions around the world...

of England and Wales
England and Wales
England and Wales is a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom...

) say that Lugovoi, should face trial for the "grave crime" of murdering Litvinenko.
22 May: Macdonald announces that Britain will seek extradition of Lugovoi and attempt to charge him with murdering Litvinenko. The Russian government states that they will not allow the extradition of any Russian citizens.
28 May: The British Foreign Office formally submits a request to the Russian Government for the extradition of Lugovoi to the UK to face criminal charges.
- The Constitution of Russia
  Constitution of Russia
  The current Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted by national referendum on 12 December 1993. Russia's constitution came into force on 25 December 1993, at the moment of its official publication...
  
  forbids extradition of Russian citizens to foreign countries (Article 61), so the request can not be fulfilled.

Extradition requests had been granted in the past (For example in 2002 Murad Garabayev has been handed to Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan , formerly also known as Turkmenia is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic . Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states...

., Garabayev's extradition was later found unlawful by the Russian courts and he was awarded 20,000 Euros in damages to be paid by the Russian government by the European Court of Human Rights

European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...

.) Article 63 does not explicitly mention Russian citizens, and therefore does not apply to them, but only to foreign nationals living in Russia. Article 61 supersedes it for the people holding the Russian citizenship.

31 May: Lugovoi held a news conference at which he accused MI6
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...

of attempting to recruit him and blamed either MI6, the Russian mafia, or fugitive Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovsky for the killing.

July 2007

16 July: The British Foreign Office confirms that, as a result of Russia's refusal to extradite Lugovoi, four Russian diplomats are to be expelled from the Russian Embassy in London.
17 July: The Russia's deputy foreign minister, Mr Alexander Grushko, threatens to expel 80 UK diplomats.
19 July: The Russian Foreign ministry spokesman, Mikhail Kamynin, declared the expulsion
Persona non grata
Persona non grata , literally meaning "an unwelcome person", is a legal term used in diplomacy that indicates a proscription against a person entering the country...

of 4 UK diplomats from the British Embassy in Moscow.

October 2007

27 October: British newspaper Daily Mail journalists Stephen Wright and David Williams, reported that Alexander Litvinenko was an MI6 agent
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...

and was receiving a retainer
Retainer agreement
A retainer agreement is a work for hire contract. It falls between a one-time contract and full-time employment. Its distinguishing feature is that the employer pays in advance for work to be specified later...

of £2000 per month when he was murdered and that the current head of MI6 Sir John Scarlett
John Scarlett
Sir John McLeod Scarlett, KCMG, OBE was Director General of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 2004 to 2009...

was involved in his recruitment, quoting unnamed "diplomatic and intelligence
Intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....

" sources. Such claims have been denied by Marina Litvinenko and Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky , CMG , is a former Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate and bureau chief in London, who was a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985.-Early career:Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International...

.

December 2008

In the 16 December 2008 interview, when asked by the Spanish newspaper El País if Litvinenko could have been killed in the interests of the Russian state, Lugovoy — wanted by British police on suspicion of the murder of Litvinenko — replied that he would order the assassination of anyone, for example, President
President of Georgia
The President of Georgia is the head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office within the Government of Georgia. Executive power is split between the President and the Prime Minister, who is the head of government...

Saakashvili
Mikheil Saakashvili
Mikheil Saakashvili is a Georgian politician, the third and current President of Georgia and leader of the United National Movement Party.Involved in the national politics since 1995, Saakashvili became president on 25 January 2004 after President Eduard Shevardnadze resigned in a November 2003...

of Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

and the KGB defector Gordievsky
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky , CMG , is a former Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate and bureau chief in London, who was a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985.-Early career:Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International...

, in the interests of the Russian state.

Deaths from ingesting radioactive materials

According to the IAEA in 1960 a person ingested 74 MBq of radium

Radium

Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...

(assumed to be ²²⁶Ra) and this person died four years later. Harold McCluskey

Harold McCluskey

Harold R. McCluskey was a chemical operations technician at the Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant located in Washington state who is known for having survived, on April 24, 1976, exposure to the highest dose of americium radiation ever recorded...

survived 11 years (eventually dying from cardiorespiratory failure

Respiratory failure

The term respiratory failure, in medicine, is used to describe inadequate gas exchange by the respiratory system, with the result that arterial oxygen and/or carbon dioxide levels cannot be maintained within their normal ranges. A drop in blood oxygenation is known as hypoxemia; a rise in arterial...

) after an intake of at least 37 MBq of ²⁴¹Am (He was exposed in 1976). It is estimated that he suffered doses of 18 Gy to his bone mass, 520 Gy to the bone surface, 8 Gy to the liver and 1.6 Gy to the lungs; it is also claimed that a post mortem examination revealed no signs of cancer

Cancer

in his body. The October 1983 issue of the journal Health Physics was dedicated to McCluskey, and subsequent papers about him appeared in the September 1995 issue.

Suspicious deaths of people involved in Russian politics

Comparisons have been made to the alleged 2004 poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko

Viktor Yushchenko

Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko is a former President of Ukraine. He took office on January 23, 2005, following a period of popular unrest known as the Orange Revolution...

(Ukraine and Russia have been separate states since 1991), the alleged 2003 poisoning of Yuri Shchekochikhin

Yuri Shchekochikhin

Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin was a Russian investigative journalist, writer, and liberal lawmaker of Russian parliament. Shchekochikhin made his name writing about and campaigning against the influence of organized crime and corruption...

and the fatal 1978 poisoning of the journalist Georgi Markov

Georgi Markov

Georgi Ivanov Markov was a Bulgarian dissident writer.Markov originally worked as a novelist and playwright, but in 1969 he defected from Bulgaria, then governed by President Todor Zhivkov...

by the Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

n Committee for State Security

Committee for State Security

The Committee for State Security , popularly known as State Security was the name of the Bulgarian secret service during the Communist rule of Bulgaria and the Cold War ....

(Russia and Bulgaria had never been parts of the same state). The incident with Litvinenko has also attracted comparisons to the poisoning by radioactive (unconfirmed) thallium of KGB defector Nikolay Khokhlov

Nikolay Khokhlov

Nikolai Evgenievich Khoklov was a KGB officer who defected to the United States in 1953. He testified about KGB activities...

and journalist Shchekochikhin of Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs....

(the Novaya Gazeta interview with the former, coincidentally, prepared by Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was later found shot to death in her apartment building). Like Litvinenko, Shchekochikhin had investigated the Russian apartment bombings (he was a member of the Kovalev

Sergei Kovalev

Sergei Kovalev is a Russian human rights activist and politician and a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner.- Early career and arrest :...

Commission that hired Litvinenko's friend Mikhail Trepashkin

Mikhail Trepashkin

as a legal counsel

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

).

KGB defector and British agent Oleg Gordievsky

Oleg Gordievsky

believes the murders of Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, Shchekochikhin, and Politkovskaya and the incident with Litvinenko show that FSB

FSB (Russia)

The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...

has returned to the practice of political assassinations, which were conducted in the past by Thirteenth KGB

KGB

Department. A comparison was also made with Roman Tsepov

Roman Tsepov

Roman Igorevich Tsepov Roman Igorevich Tsepov Roman Igorevich Tsepov (Russian: Роман Игоревич Цепов, (July 22, 1962, Kolpino, Leningrad Oblast, USSR – September 24, 2004, Saint-Petersburg) was a Saint Petersburg businessman and confidant to Vladimir Putin during Putin's work at the Saint Petersburg...

who was responsible for personal protection of Anatoly Sobchak

Anatoly Sobchak

Anatoly Alexandrovich Sobchak was a Russian politician, a co-author of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg, and a mentor and teacher of both Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev....

and Putin, and who died in Russia in 2004 from poisoning by an unknown radioactive substance.

Officers of FSB "special forces" liked to use Litvinenko photos for target practice in shooting galleries, according to Russian journalist Yulia Latynina

Yulia Latynina

Yulia Leonidovna Latynina is a Russian journalist, writer and radio host. She works at the radio station Echo of Moscow. She also writes for Novaya Gazeta and The Moscow Times.-Writer, journalist and radio host:...

External links

Litvinenko Justice Foundation on Litvinenko.org.uk
A review of the technical issues associated with the ²¹⁰Po poisoning.
60 Minutes & The Second Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko at LitvinenkoMurder.org
The Litvinenko affair: Murder most opaque - The Economist
From Russia with lies in Salon.com
The Litvinenko Chronicles
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
The article by film-maker
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

Andrei Nekrasov
Andrei Nekrasov
Andrei Lvovich Nekrasov is a Russian film and TV director from Saint Petersburg.Andrei Nekrasov studied acting and directing at the State Institute for Theater and Film in his native Saint Petersburg. He studied comparative literature and philosophy at the University of Paris, taking a master's...

in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
Andrei Nekrasov film "Disbelief (Loose change in Russia 1999)" which recounts the book "Blowing up Russia: Terror from within" by Litvinenko
UKIP MEP Gerard Batten reveals some information given to him by Alexander Litvinenko
"The Oligarchs"; Former Knesset Member Uri Avnery on how Berezovsky et al. amassed their wealth
Transcript of interview with Boris Berezovsky conducted on behalf of Russian General Prosecutor's Office
Transcript of interview with Ahmed Zakayev conducted on behalf of Russian General Prosecutor's Office
The Litvinenko Justice Foundation
"The Moscow plot"; Excerpt from the book The Litvinenko File by former BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith
"The Laboratory 12 poison plot"; Another excerpt from the same book
Excerpt from the book "Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB" by Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko
Another excerpt from the same book
Excerpt from "The Terminal Spy: A True story of Espionage, Betrayal, and Murder" by New York Times journalist Alan S. Cowell

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Background

Illness and poisoning

The poison

Po-210 concentration in the body of Litvinenko

Thallium - initial hypothesis

Death and last statement

Initial steps

Polonium trails

British extradition request

Extradition declined

A BBC programme

Possibly related events

Sources and production of polonium

Possible motivation for using polonium-210

Theories

Suspects

Other persons related to the case

Background history

October 2006

November 2006

December 2006

February 2007

May 2007

July 2007

October 2007

December 2008

Deaths from ingesting radioactive materials

Suspicious deaths of people involved in Russian politics

See also

External links