Hmm...where have we heard that before? These reports comes from Australia, India, and USA. I think the verdict on who killed him is still out and any speculation before an official criminal investigation with hard evidence is simply speculation and rather premature?
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1797094.htm
FSB suspected in Litvinenko killing
Friday, 24 November , 2006 18:26:00
Reporter: MARK COLVIN:
Professor Graeme Gill of the School of Economics and Political Science at Sydney University is an expert on the countries of the former Soviet Union. He joins me now.
MARK COLVIN: Professor Gill, who do you think killed Alexander Litvinenko?
GRAEME GILL: Well, I don't really know who killed him but the argument that it was done by the FSB, by, that is, the Russian Security Service, is plausible given that he once worked there and presumably had built up information, which they might not want to be broadcast abroad.
The other possible source is that it's said that he was working on an investigation into who killed Anna Politkovskaya and therefore it's quite possible that the people who were responsible for that murder, who might be the same people, the FSB, but might not be, it's quite possible that they were responsible for it.
MARK COLVIN: Particularly because before she was killed, I think a year or two before she was killed, Anna Politkovskaya herself was almost certainly poisoned on an aeroplane flight down to Chechnya, wasn't she?
GRAEME GILL: That's certainly true she was poisoned down there and the then leader of the Chechen Government was reported as saying that he would be quite happy if she was killed.
So there are clearly groups who are connected with the Chechen conflict who had aims to realise by killing Anna Politkovskaya and this could of course knock on to this latest assassination.
MARK COLVIN: How does all this link in to the idea that Russia is now, at least to some extent, what's called a kleptocracy, a country which is ruled essentially by people who've stolen billions and gained power that way?
GRAEME GILL: Well, I think we do need to distinguish between two different sorts of assassinations and killings.
One is that which Emma Griffiths began talking about and that is the assassination of bankers, which seems to be bound up with business disputes and with corruption.
The other sort of assassination is that which is connected directly to the political system, to criticism of President Putin, to criticism of the policies that he's pursuing both in Chechnya and elsewhere.
And we've seen the state take action against his critics - look at the arrest of Khodorkovsky, and we've seen people who were critical of Putin assassinated as well - Anna Politkovskaya.
So I think we do need to distinguish between those two sorts of killings and it's not clear that the same groupings are responsible for both of them.
MARK COLVIN: So it could be extremely complex? There's a sort of interwoven network of alliances and enmities there?
GRAEME GILL: There certainly is, there is an interweaving.
And there's also an overlapping of the political and economic as well. So that many people who are in business do have close connections with the Kremlin.
So, it may be that those actions that are taken in the economic sphere do have political implications too, but nevertheless we can distinguish between the two.
MARK COLVIN: Litvinenko wrote a book which asserted that the FSB, the Security Service, had bombed those flats in Moscow some years ago and pinned it on the Chechens as essentially a way of starting a war that would keep Putin in power. That's a very boiled down version of the story.
Do you think that the FSB does have too much power, not only because Putin's in the Kremlin but because he has surrounded himself with ex-Secret Service people?
GRAEME GILL: Well, I think it is certainly the case that what Putin has done has been to introduce a much more authoritarian political system in Russia. And part of that political system has been the movement into power of people with Secret Service backgrounds. That is certainly the case.
MARK COLVIN: Professor Gill, we're going to have to leave it there for time reasons. Thank you very much for joining us.
Professor Graeme Gill of the School of Economics and Political Science at Sydney University. ***************** http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/007_mystery_Putins_Russia_under_attack/articleshow/573353.cms
Times of India
007 mystery: Putin's Russia under attack
Roshan Lal [ 25 Nov, 2006 1954hrs
LONDON: In a gathering diplomatic crisis between Europe and Vladimir Putin's Russia, Britain has officially asked the Kremlin for help in investigating the mysterious and extraordinary death here by radioactive poisoning of former KGB dissident-turned-British citizen Alexander Litvinenko.
Litvinenko's painful death late on Thursday in a central London hospital, allegedly by a massive dose of the highly radioactive and toxic material Polonium 210, has set off a full counter-terrorism police investigation across the British capital with traces of the element found at across several locations in the city, sparking public health fears.
Britain's heavyweight Cobra committee, the Downing Street crisis team, has already met several times in emergency session over growing fears that Litvinenko's murder could mean an assassination squad is targeting Russian dissidents in London.
Polonium 210, a by-product of uranium, is very difficult to obtain other than from a nuclear installation, scientists said and security experts warned of serious security implications, if radioactive material is found to have been smuggled into Britain.
It is believed that Litvinenko somehow ingested a small amount of the pure alpha-emitter Polonium 210 on or around November 1. Although harmless to the outer skin, the heavy metal, in quantities no larger than a pinch of salt, destroys internal organs by causing severe radiation poisoning. In a sequence worthy of a James Bond film or John le Carre novel, Polonium 210 is being described as the perfect, if unique and unprecedented killer poison because unlike the better known radioactive elements that emit gamma rays, it would be impossible to detect using a Geiger counter.
Until he died from heart failure, doctors had failed to pinpoint the cause of symptoms that reduced the fanatically-fit 43-year-old Litvinenko to a "ghost" with a crippled immune system and a useless liver.
A post-mortem will not be carried out until it is deemed safe for London hospital staff. Eminent British nuclear scientist Peter Zimmerman has gone on record to say that because Polonium 210 is extremely rare in nature, can only be produced in nuclear reactors using the bombardment of neutrons and has never before been used by intelligence agencies such as the KGB or anyone else as a murder weapon.
Even as Putin's Russia moves towards joining the World Trade Organisation, agreeing a major new partnership and cooperation agreement with the European Union and Russian companies bidding to buy up leading British and European ones, British officials admitted the diplomatic ramifications would be immense if Russian agents are implicated in Litvinenko's death. Officials agreed the gathering storm could lead to the frostiest relations with Moscow since the Cold War.
Britain's intelligence agencies have claimed that Litvinenko's death - the first by Polonium 210 anywhere in the world - bears all the hallmarks of a "state-sponsored" murder. But political analysts, Russia experts and President Putin himself have the rising hysteria over alleged Kremlin involvement. ******************* http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0611250213nov25,1,703 009.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
Chicago Tribune
Ex-spy's deathbed charge: It was Putin Russian leader denies role; radioactive material found in former agent
By Tom Hundley and Alex Rodriguez, Tribune foreign correspondents. Tom Hundley reported from London and Alex Rodriguez from Moscow
November 25, 2006
LONDON -- In a chilling accusation dictated and signed just hours before he lapsed into a coma and died, a former KGB agent fingered Russian President Vladimir Putin as the man ultimately responsible for his death after a suspected poisoning shrouded in mystery.
Putin denied the allegation as medical experts and criminal investigators tried to unravel a case that has perplexed them for three weeks.
British officials announced Friday that a "major dose" of polonium-210, a hard-to-detect radioactive substance, had been found in the urine of the former agent, Alexander Litvinenko. Scotland Yard said it also had found traces of the substance in Litvinenko's London home, at a sushi bar where he ate with a colleague and at a hotel where he met two Russian men on the day he fell ill.
Standing before a cluster of cameras and reporters Friday outside London's University College Hospital where Litvinenko, 43, was pronounced dead Thursday evening, his close friend Alexander Goldfarb read the former spy's final statement:
"You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women.
"You may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world, Mr. Putin, will reverberate in your ears for the rest of your life."
The Russian government has strongly denied any involvement in what Scotland Yard is officially treating as an "unexplained death."
Speaking to reporters Friday in Helsinki, Finland, where he was attending a Russian-European Union summit, Putin called Litvinenko's death a "tragedy" but asserted that until now, there has been no proof of foul play. He also expressed doubts about Litvinenko's posthumous statement.
"If such a note really appeared before Mr. Litvinenko's death, the question arises why it had not been published earlier when he was still alive," Putin said. "And if it appeared after his death, what comments can there be?
"The people who did it are not God almighty," Putin continued, "and Mr. Litvinenko, alas, is not Lazarus. And it's a great pity that even such tragic things as human death are used for political provocations."
Russia agrees to aid in probe
In a meeting at the British Foreign Office, British diplomats asked the Russian ambassador to help in the investigation. Putin said the Russian government would do so.
Goldfarb, the Litvinenko family's spokesman, acknowledged there was "no smoking gun" linking Putin to the death but said that "the Russian government long ago lost the benefit of the doubt" because of what he called a long history of political assassination.
For days, doctors treating Litvinenko were baffled. At first they thought he had been given a lethal dose of thallium--a substance used in rat poison--but that theory was ruled out Friday after polonium-210 was found in his urine.
Pat Troop, head of Britain's Health Protection Agency, said that the high levels of the substance found in Litvinenko's urine indicated that he "would either have to have eaten it, inhaled it or taken it in through a wound." Officials were debating whether it was safe to perform an autopsy, Troop said.
The former spy's father, Walter Litvinenko, a medical doctor, was at his son's side at the time of death and later spoke to reporters outside the hospital.
"It was an excruciating death, and he took it like a real man," said the elder Litvinenko, tears flowing. "He never lost his human dignity."
Fateful meetings?
The strange tale began Nov. 1 when Litvinenko met for tea with two Russian men at a London hotel. One of them, a former KGB agent named Andrei Lugovoi, has since offered to assist in the investigation.
Later that day, Litvinenko met with an Italian investigator, Mario Scaramella, who apparently showed him documents related to the Oct. 7 murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of Putin.
That evening Litvinenko fell ill and checked into a London hospital. Ten days later, he told the British Broadcasting Corp's Russian service that he had been poisoned after receiving information on the Politkovskaya case.
On Nov. 17, as his condition deteriorated, he was transferred to University College Hospital. When doctors there suspected he had been given a fatal dose of thallium, Scotland Yard opened an investigation.
As hope faded, his final words, whispered to Andrei Nekrasov, a friend and filmmaker, were, "The bastards got me, but they won't get everybody," according to a report in The Times of London. He then lapsed into a coma.
Litvinenko became a KGB agent in 1988 and rose through the ranks of its successor organization until autumn 1998, when he appeared at a news conference and accused the agency of asking him to help assassinate Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian oligarch and one of Putin's fiercest critics.
The next year, Litvinenko was arrested on charges of abuse of office and spent 9 months in jail before winning acquittal in 2000. With the help of Goldfarb, Litvinenko fled to Britain and was granted asylum. He became a British citizen last month.
Goldfarb said that what angered the Kremlin most about Litvinenko is a book he published in 2002, "Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within," which said that Russian intelligence agents had engineered a series of apartment-building bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities that were blamed on Chechen rebels. Russian authorities have vehemently denied the allegation.
Putin expressed condolences to Litvinenko's family but at the same time stressed that, "as far as I know, the medical certificate of British doctors does not indicate that he died a violent death. It does not say that. Hence, there is no reason for such talk at all.
"I hope that British authorities won't fuel groundless political scandals whatsoever."
Remarks from Russian lawmakers and commentators on Russia's state-controlled television networks mirrored Putin's skepticism. Some argued that perhaps Berezovsky, who is wanted on fraud charges in Russia, had masterminded Litvinenko's murder in an attempt to blacken the Kremlin's image.
"People have started to forget about Berezovsky, and he might have chosen such a method to draw attention to himself ahead of next year's elections in Russia," said Nikolai Kovalyov, a lawmaker in Russia's parliament and a member of Putin's United Russia party.
One Russian publication, Mir Novostei, suggested the CIA poisoned Litvinenko to embarrass Russia. Other Russian media outlets such as the TV Center network also speculated that Litvinenko's poisoning was a public-relations ploy "aimed against Russia."
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