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The nuclear poison used to kill Alexander Litvinenko has left a trail that appears to lead back to Moscow. It's a killing that could yet seriously undermine relations between Britain and Russia

We first met beside the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus. Wearing dark glasses and leather jacket, Alexander Litvinenko appeared unexpectedly behind my back, saying: 'I was watching you from around the corner. You are not a spy, are you?' I suggested coffee in the nearby Caffe Nero, the first of our often chaotic, erratic conversations we would share from last April until his death. I asked various questions about the Chechen people in Moscow during the Eighties and Nineties. Litvinenko, though, leapt from one exotic story to another - secret operations in Afghanistan, a plot against Boris Yeltsin, the...

Russian president Vladimir Putin has expressed his anger at Britain's failure to gag Alexander Litvinenko in the final hours of his life, the cabinet has been told. Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, told ministers that the Russian government had “taken exception” to the poisoned former spy’s deathbed letter accusing the Putin regime of murdering him. This weekend a potential suspect — Andrei Lugovoi — admitted he had been contaminated with the radioactive poison polonium-210 but insisted: “I’ve been framed.” Beckett, who spoke to her Russian counterpart before Thursday’s cabinet meeting, said the Russians had “seemingly failed to understand” that Litvinenko...

Focus: Cracking the code of the nuclear assassin The nuclear poison used to kill Alexander Litvinenko has left a trail that appears to lead back to Moscow. It's a killing that could yet seriously undermine relations between Britain and Russia. You would be hard put to find better cover to assassinate an exiled Russian dissident. On Wednesday, November 1, hundreds of Russians were in London to watch Arsenal play CSKA Moscow in the Champions League. Among all the families, groups and individual supporters arriving from Moscow, a killer, or killers, could hope for anonymity. After the evening kick-off at the...

Test results on Mario Scaramella, the man feared to be the second victim of a Russian hit squad widely blamed for the death of spy Alexander Litvinenko, shows no sign of radiation poisoning. The Italian academic who met the ex-KGB man on the day he was allegedly poisoned, was admitted to hospital on Friday having tested positive for a "significant" quantity of the radioactive substance. Health chiefs confirmed on Friday night that Mr Scaramella had traces of deadly polonium 210, which is believed to have killed Mr Litvinenko, in his body. But doctors at London's University College Hospital have said...

Tributes to Sasha Litvinenko, the sob story spy, are on all the tearstained pages of the UK tabloids today. Probably the Daily Mail drivels it best. ‘He was honest, courageous, loving husband . . . etc.’ Blimey. You would never know he was a devious little toe-nail puller from the KGB. Or that his patron, Boris Berezovsky - not mentioned by the Daily Mail - is a gangland legend, veteran of countless contract hits. Or that his closest associate is an even scarier Chechen terrorist, Ahmed Zakayev. Probably the nicest thing you can say about Alexander Litvinenko is that he...

<p>An Italian security expert who met with a former KGB agent the day the ex-spy fell fatally ill with radiation poisoning has also tested positive for the substance, British authorities reported Friday.</p> <p>Mario Scaramella met with Alexander Litvinenko at a sushi bar in London on Nov. 1 the day the former intelligence agent first reported the symptoms that ultimately led to his death.</p>

Breaking News Mario Scaramella Radiation Hits Second Man Updated: 14:53, Friday December 01, 2006 A contact of an ex-Russian spy who died after ingesting a radioactive toxin has the same substance in his body, Sky News has learnt. Italian academic Mario Scaramella tested positive for isotope Polonium-210. He had met Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko at a sushi restaurant in London, shortly before he fell ill. Sky's Martin Brunt said Mr Scaramella had not shown the same symptoms as Mr Litvinenko, who suffered vomiting and loss of hair before he died.

A secret assassination squad was set up to poison former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, it was claimed today.The allegations are contained in two letters smuggled out of a Russian jail and passed to a close friend of Mr Litvinenko. The letters were apparently written in jail by Mikhail Trepashkin, a former Russian intelligence officer. In one, Mr Litvinenko is warned that both he and his family are at risk. Mr Litvinenko's friend Alex Goldfarb said scans of the letters came into his possession yesterday and he passed them to Scotland Yard. In 2004 Mr Trepashkin, who worked for the KGB's...

It's a veritable field day for armchair detectives and conspiracy theorists. The presumed murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB spy who died of radioactive poisoning last week, has created a real-life whodunit. Police are now one step closer to cracking the case.

"Italian Mario Scaramella, a contact of dead ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, has tested positive for polonium-210. Mr Scaramella is not thought to be suffering physical symptoms but the amount found is "likely to be of concern for [his] immediate health". He met Mr Litvinenko at sushi restaurant Itsu in central London on the day he fell ill. Meanwhile, the post-mortem examination on Mr Litvinenko, a former KGB agent, has started."

British Airways is trying to contact all 33,000 passengers who may have been exposed to radioactive traces that were found on two of its planes. Thousands of BA passengers were caught in the radiation scare last night after traces of a substance, thought to be the same that killed the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, were found on the planes. A spokesman for the airline said that, so far, 2,500 of the 33,000 passengers who are believed to have flown on 221 flights across Europe since the traces were found have called in to BA's dedicated helpline. The Government grounded...

If I simply stood anywhere near Boris Berezovsky, I’m sure my hair would fall out and my skin would turn yellow. Alexander Litvinenko is simply the last in a long line of stiffs associated with Boris, a line of corpses that stretches back to the mid-nineties. One died from a mysterious nerve toxin applied to the rim of his coffee cup. If you want to know about Boris Berezovsky, ask former Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov. Except you can’t, because he was blown away in 2004, shortly after writing up Berezovsky’s bullet-ridden bio, ‘Godfather Of Crime’. The Litvinenko case is notable...

London (dpa) - Former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar, who was hospitalized after falling ill at a conference in Ireland, was poisoned, his daughter claimed Thursday. ``It was a political poisoning,'' Maria Gaidar told the BBC's News 24 channel. Doctors see ``no other grounds'' for the mystery illness, she said. The 50-year-old was initially hospitalized in Ireland and has since returned to Moscow where he remains in hospital but is said to be improving. Gaidar was acting prime minister in 1992, though Russia's legislature ultimately vetoed his candidacy. In the 1990s, he served as economics and finance minister and as...

The radioactive poison used to kill the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko is being offered for sale over the internet for less than £40. A company in the US claims to supply polonium-210 to anyone for just $69 plus postage and packing. A three-pack set of “alpha, beta, gamma” radioactive isotopes also includes polonium-210. United Nuclear, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, tells purchasers: “If you’re looking for clean, accurate, certified radiation sources, here they are. . . All isotopes are produced fresh in a nuclear reactor and shipped directly to you.” The company says that it has supplied radioactive materials...

FORMER Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko feared he had been poisoned by Italian academic Mario Scaramella, it was revealed yesterday. Pal Yuri Felshtinsky, who wrote a book with Litvinenko, 43, says the stricken ex-KGB man named the Italian in a deathbed phone call. He told Felshtinsky, 50, that Scaramella seemed nervous and ate nothing when they met in a London sushi restaurant on November 1, after which the Russian fell ill. Police believe a tiny grain of radioactive Polonium-210 was dropped into Litvinenko’s food. Scaramella, who headed an organisation which tracked dumped nuclear waste, has DENIED being responsible for the ex-spy’s...

British investigators still do not know why, when, how and by whom Alexander Litvinenko has been murdered. In fact, they are still considering the possibility that he committed suicide. But at least they now know what killed him. The ex-KGB colonel was poisoned with large amount of a highly radioactive element: Polonium-210. It is yet unknown when and where Mr Litvinenko ingested the poison. "Working out the time of poisoning on the basis of the radioactivity found in his body is not a precise calculation," said Prof. Pat Troop, the chief executive of the Health Protection Agency. So far, police...

Andropov realized in the early 1980s that the Soviet economy was failing and that, with economic failure, it would collapse. Andropov knew that the exploitation of Western innovation had always been vital to the Soviet economy. ... Andropov engineered a new concept. If the Soviet Union was to survive, it had to forge a new relationship with the West. ... The Andropov doctrine argued that the Soviet Union could not survive if it did not end, or at least mitigate, the Cold War. Furthermore, if it was to entice Western investment and utilize that investment efficiently, it needed to do...

Last Updated: Wednesday, 29 November 2006, 21:29 GMT E-mail this to a friend Printable version Radioactive traces on BA planes Mr Litvinenko was a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin Traces of a radioactive substance have been found on two British Airways planes at Heathrow Airport, says BA.The planes, plus a third in Moscow, are being tested as part of the probe into the death from radiation poisoning of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. BA is trying to make contact with up to 33,000 passengers who travelled on the 221 European flights affected, including the London to Moscow route....

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