‘Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within’ was poisoned by highly radio active material.
In London, the country’s Health Protection Agency confirmed that a large quantity of the
radioactive element polonium 210 were found in Litvinenko’s urine. Officials said it was not yet clear how the material entered his body.
Litvinenko died in a London hospital late Thursday after a three-week fight for his life. He told friends he fell ill at the beginning of November after meeting two Russians at a hotel in London.
In a statement he wrote shortly before he died, the spy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of involvement in the poisoning scandal. "You may succeed in silencing one man. But a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life," the ex-spy said in a statement read out by friends outside the hospital where he died.
MOSCOW MURDER?
"May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people." The dead man’s allegation that Moscow sent agents to murder him, in what would be the first such killing in the West since the Cold War, overshadowed a European Union summit in Helsinki, where Putin said there was no evidence implicating the Kremlin.
"It is a great pity that even something as tragic as a man’s death is being used for political provocation," Putin said. "I hope the British authorities would not contribute to instigating political scandals. It has nothing to do with reality."
Britain’s Foreign Office said it had raised Litvinenko’s death with Moscow and called it a "serious matter". The poisoning came as the former Russian agent was investigating the recent killing in Moscow of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a frequent critic of the Kremlin.
DEFECTING BRITAIN
Litvinenko defected to Britain six years ago after accusing Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet KGB, of ordering the killing of Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky and involvement in explosions that rocked Moscow in 1999.
He said Kremlin agents had a major role in bombings that killed about 300 Russian civilians in 1999 and sparked retaliatory attacks on separatists in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. (With reports from London and Helsinki).
