Former Russian spy, last name pronounced lit-vih-NEN'-koh.
Age 43.
Litvinenko worked both for the KGB and for a successor, the Federal Security Service.
In 1998, he publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill a Russian tycoon.
In 1999, he spent nine months in jail on charges of abuse of office, for which he was later acquitted.
Litvinenko sought asylum in Britain in 2000, where he lived with his wife and 10-year-old son.
Litvinenko was a relentless critic of the Kremlin and the Russian security services.
He died Thursday, November 23rd, 2006.
Litvinenko had publicly linked the Kremlin to the death of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
Just hours before he lost consciousness, Tuesday, November 21st, Litvinenko told The London Times newspaper he would likely die and claimed the Kremlin was directly involved in poisoning him.
Wednesday, November 22nd, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, issued a strong denial that it was involved in any assassination attempt. The Interfax News agency quotes SVR as saying: "Litvinenko is not the kind of person for whose sake we would spoil bilateral relations."
The day before he fell ill, he had two meetings. One with an unidentified Russian and with a former KGB colleague and bodyguard. Another with an Italian security expert.
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