Guardian/UK
Spy's assassins may have poisoned themselves - FBI
· Killers 'were not trained' in handling polonium-219 · Method possibly meant to send message to emigres
Ian Cobain, Jeevan Vasagar, Tom Parfitt in Moscow Saturday December 9, 2006 The Guardian
The assassins who poisoned Alexander Litvinenko in a London hotel bar may have exposed themselves to a potentially fatal dose of radioactivity, according to an FBI assessment of the killing.
Tests which have revealed a trail of polonium-210 across more than a dozen locations around the capital suggest the killers could have ingested substantial amounts of the isotope.
Seven staff at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel on Grosvenor Square have been poisoned with small amounts of polonium-210, along with at least two business associates of the Russian ex-spy, possibly after it had been dissolved in a solution which would have evaporated during the poisoning.
Yesterday the Pine Bar was sealed off, with uniformed police officers guarding the entrance. Two third-floor rooms were also sealed off.
At least one of the seven contaminated hotel staff is said to be on holiday, while others were still working. "They're just not allowed to serve food at the moment," said a colleague. The hotel worker, who is close to one of the seven staff contaminated with polonium-210, said: "No one's batted an eyelid. There's nothing you can do about it - so why worry? It's a 5% increased chance of cancer in your lifetime, when you've got a 30% chance of cancer anyway. Hopefully it will all blow over. It's just the media and the police keep kicking it off."
Officials from the FBI, which has been asked to offer technical assistance to the British investigation, have concluded that the killers were not professionally trained to handle the substance. This suggests the use of radioactive material made the killing "as much a message as a murder", according to FBI sources.
The FBI has been helping British investigators trying to pinpoint the source of the polonium-210. So far it has been able to establish only that it was brought to London from Moscow.
Associates of the dead former spy have always insisted he was murdered on the orders of the Kremlin in a manner intended to terrify other emigres, an accusation which Russian president Vladimir Putin has personally denied.
Yesterday Vladimir Bukovsky, a dissident who fled the Soviet Union for Britain 30 years ago, said: "Terrorist acts are always calculated to affect others. In this case I wouldn't say it's especially addressed to the refugee community. It's addressed to all Russians inside the country and outside, to say: 'We have very long hands.' They are afraid of a revolution, which is rubbish, it's not going to happen, but some individuals believe it may."
Russia's prosecutor-general says he too is investigating the death of Mr Litvinenko and may ask permission for a team of Russian detectives to fly to London.
A spokesman for the prosecutor-general's office said investigators could request a meeting in London with Boris Berezovsky, the London-based Russian multimillionaire, and with Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen rebel envoy, both close associates of Mr Litvinenko. Russian politicians have consistently suggested that Mr Berezovsky, who fled to London in 2000 after falling out with President Putin, has used the death of Mr Litvinenko as a "provocation" to discredit the Kremlin, an allegation the businessman denies.
Mr Berezovsky said he would cooperate with the British and Russian police. "I absolutely trust the British police and absolutely don't trust the Russian," he said. "But even in a very bad organisation there are some real people who really care to know the truth, and maybe there is at least one in the Russian police."
Two of Mr Litvinenko's business associates who stayed at the hotel between October 31 and November 3 were undergoing tests at an unnamed Moscow hospital yesterday. One, Dmitri Kovtun, was said by Russian authorities to have suffered radioactive poisoning, although there were conflicting reports about whether he is seriously ill.
Mr Kovtun and another associate, Andrei Lugovoi, have both denied any involvement in the incident and pledged to cooperate fully with the British inquiry. Mr Kovtun was interviewed in the presence of British police on Thursday, but Scotland Yard would not say whether Mr Lugovoi had also been questioned.
Yesterday it also emerged that initial tests which suggested that Mario Scaramella, an Italian associate of Mr Litvinenko, had ingested large amounts of polonium-210 were either incorrect or misread.
He is understood to have been poisoned with relatively small amounts of the substance, is not thought to be in immediate danger, and has been discharged from hospital.