LONDON, Dec. 7, 2006
Spy Story Twists From London To Moscow
Litvinenko Buried; More Radiation Found; Russian And U.K. Authorities Investigating
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Play CBS Video Video Russian Spy Case Witness Talks British officials visit a witness in the poisoning death of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. Sheila MacVicar reports the witness is a former spy and was also exposed to the same radioactive poison.
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Video The Case Of The Poisoned Spy The plot thickens in the investigation into who poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. Charlie D'Agata reports on the baffling case that's now reaching onto American soil.
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Video Spy Poisoning Probe Expands The investigation into the poisoning of ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko has expanded to the Russian defector Yuri Shvets, who might be able to offer up clues. Richard Roth reports.
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The coffin of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko is carried during his funeral at Highgate Cemetery in north London Thursday Dec. 7 2006. (AP Photo)
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Dmitry Kovtun and the late Alexander Litvinenko (CBS/AP)
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Police search the Millennium Hotel in London, Nov. 25 2006. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)
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Circled by journalists, British Scotland Yard police officers investigating the poisoning death of a former KGB agent arrive in Moscow's Domodedovo airport, Monday, Dec. 4, 2006. (AP Photo)
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Alexander Litvinenko in 2002, left and in his hospital bed, at the University College Hospital in central London Monday Nov. 20, 2006. (AP)
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Interactive Mystery Of The Poisoned Spy A former KGB agent gets a fatal dose, and traces of the poison keep turning up.
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Who's Who Poisoned Spy Case Mystery surrounds death of former KGB agent who was fatally poisoned in London.
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Interactive Radiation Exposure A look at the effect of different doses of radiation on the human body.
The Latest Developments:
London's Highgate Cemetery.
The Russian Probe
Russian prosecutors opened their own investigation into the former KGB agent's poisoning death, and authorities said a key figure was ill with symptoms related to polonium-210, the highly radioactive substance that killed Litvinenko.
The opening of a criminal case in Moscow would allow suspects in the Litvinenko case to be prosecuted in Russia. Officials there previously have said that Russia would not allow the extradition of any suspects in the death.
The Russian Prosecutor General's office also said it had opened a criminal investigation into the attempted killing of Dmitry Kovtun, a former agent who met Litvinenko in the Millennium Hotel on Nov. 1, hours before Litvinenko became fatally ill.
Russian officials said Kovtun, has developed an illness connected with polonium-210.
The Russian news agency Interfax reported that Kovtun was in critical condition in a coma, but a source close to Kovtun told CBS News that he is in a "normal physical state" and have been receiving only out-patient treatment by health workers.
A lawyer connected to the case, Andrei Romashov, also told the Associated Press that the report about Kovtun being in a coma was not true.
Kovtun was questioned earlier this week by Russian investigators and Scotland Yard detectives in Moscow, although it was not immediately clear if he was considered a witness or as a potential suspect.
A scheduled interview with former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi, who was with Kovtun at the Millennium Hotel in London, was postponed, his lawyer told The Associated Press. Lugovoi said he would answer all the British investigators' questions, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Kovtun and Lugovoi have told reporters in Moscow that someone is trying to frame them in Litvinenko's death.
Lugovoi was at one point a bodyguard for former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, who also fell sick recently in Ireland with an illness that Russian doctors have been unable to diagnose. On Thursday, Britain's Financial Times and the Russian newspaper Vedomosti published a letter written by Gaidar with the headline: "I was poisoned and Russia's political enemies were surely behind it."
"Most likely ... some obvious or hidden adversaries of the Russian authorities stand behind the scenes of this event, those who are interested in further radical deterioration of relations between Russia and the West," Gaidar wrote in the letter.
From his deathbed, Litvinenko blamed his fate on Russian President Vladimir Putin — a charge that Kremlin officials have called "nonsense." Traces of polonium-210 were found in Litvinenko's body after his Nov. 23 death.
More Radiation Found
Britain's Health Protection Agency said seven workers at the Millennium Hotel, where Litvinenko met two Russians on the day he fell ill, have tested positive for "low levels" of polonium.
The agency said the employees were working in the hotel's Pine Bar and that there was no risk to their health in the short-term and little danger for the general public.
Scotland Yard on Wednesday said it was investigating his death as a homicide, and traces of radiation have been found at more than a dozen sites in Britain and on jetliners that flew between London and Moscow.
Faint levels of polonium-210 had been found at two locations at London's Emirates Stadium, where Lugovoi and Kovtun attended a soccer game Nov. 1, officials said Wednesday.
The radiation was "barely detectable" and posed no public health risk, government health agency spokeswoman Katherine Lewis said.
Traces also were found at the British Embassy in Moscow, the Foreign Office said. Officials said the level was low and posed no risk to health.
The Funeral
Litvinenko was laid to rest in a rain-swept funeral at London's Highgate Cemetery attended by a Russian tycoon, a Chechen rebel leader and other exiled Kremlin critics. Self-exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky, Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev and some 50 mourners consoled Litvinenko's widow, Marina, and 12-year-old son, Anatoly, at the funeral. A single white rose was placed on his rain-splattered dark oak casket.
Lord John Rea, director of the Save Chechnya campaign, held up a picture of crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose murder Litvinenko was investigating at the time of his fatal poisoning. Litvinenko, who criticized Putin's policies in Chechnya, reportedly had converted to Islam before his death, and some of the mourners were dressed in traditional Muslim robes. They left red flowers and an orange and yellow wreath at the stone gate of the famous cemetery where communist revolutionary Karl Marx is buried.
Earlier Thursday, Zakayev and Litvinenko's father, Walter, joined hundreds of Muslims who had gathered at London's Regent's Park Mosque for regular daily prayer to attend a memorial service, where the imam recited a funeral prayer.
"The imam said a special passage for him from the Quran," said Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, head of Britain's Muslim parliament.
Walter Litvinenko and Zakayev both insisted the former spy had converted to Islam on his deathbed, although some friends disputed the claim — saying he had merely expressed empathy with Chechen Muslims. Siddiqui said the mosque had been told Litvinenko converted to Islam 10 days before he was admitted to a hospital last month.
Vladimir Bukovsky, a friend and fellow Putin critic, said Litvinenko had asked that his body eventually be moved to Chechnya. The region in southern Russia is mostly Muslim and plagued by rebel attacks as well as violence blamed on federal troops and forces of the Moscow-backed Chechen government.
"On his deathbed, he asked to be buried when the war is over in Chechen soil," Bukovsky said. "He was a fierce defender of Chechnya and critic of the Kremlin."
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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- I have just visited Russia and the truth is that we are still being fed the same propaganda we were fed during the Soviet times. Putin's is very popular with the people and has done a lot to try to curb the violence. You must remember Democracy is not born in a day. The people enjoy more freedom today then they did during the Soviet times and that in itself is a plus for humanity. We here in the US do not remember or could even know what the founding fathers of this country had to deal with there was not internet or for that matter so many people having first hand knowledge so it stands to reason that we had the very same problems in this country 240 years ago. If Russia moves closer to the East and not to the West as Putin wants for his people it will just send them right back to where they started. The first step is to make certain that Russia stays together and does not break up this would cause the world more problems then we can imagine. Finally the idiot we call a President stop setting up road blocks for Russia to enter the WTO this should help. Regardless of what is past it is now time to ensure that Russia does not start leaning towards the East again.
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- dkrants asked, "Even if we assume that these Russian pro-East plotters would want Litvinenko dead, why would they use Polonium instead of doing a quieter job and making it look like an accident?
In any case Litvinenko was too small of a target for a political asassination..."
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Polonium 210 ensured Litvinenko's agony was of (1) maximum duration for the media and (2) an almost certain death, both of which would generate enormous public feeling against Putin and the West group-- exactly what happened.
Had Litvinenko been quietly poisoned with anothe agent, the whole affair might have been quickly over and forgotten. However, with the intent not primarily assassination but negative publicity against Putin, a radioactive agent best ensured Litvinenko's excruciatingly slow death.
As a very public martyrdom against Putin and his group, Litvinenko's death drama is roughly equivalent to the publicity given a hunger strike. Litvinenko was only one man, but the media coverage made him into an army of accusations against the Western group, and Putin, in particular. - Reply to this comment
- Cohen story seems more like a cover-up than a real assessment. Only time will tell what was behind it. But from common sense, Moscow and Chechenia don't mix well...any one favoring Chechenia will meet his/her fate.
The British now have the moral responsibility to expose the truth. Good luck to them. - Reply to this comment
- Looks like KGB got its own man, when they learned that he was too sympathetic to the Chechen Muslims, who have suffered the gravest of attrocities by Moscow.
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- alphaa10,
Even if we assume that these Russian pro-East plotters would want Litvinenko dead, why would they use Polonium instead of doing a quieter job and making it look like an accident?
In any case Litvinenko was too small of a target for a political asassination. I bet very few here were even aware of this "vocal critic of Putin's regime" before this whole story with his death. - Reply to this comment
- Before we are carried away with hatred of Putin, Princeton Russian expert Stephen Cohen, interviewed this week on the PBS talk show, Charlie Rose, cautions the Western press and people to withhold judgment.
Cohen, a resident specialist on Soviet and Russian Kremlin intrigues, suggests that there may be a power struggle in the Kremlin which pits those favoring a rapprochment with the East (Red China/PRC) against those, including Putin, who would like Russia to face Westward. The East conspiracy, Cohen says, would like to poison (literally) all relations with the West.
Cohen says the manner of Litvinenko's death may be a clue to the assassin's identity. The death was so dramatically extended for the press and so damaging to the people Litvinenko condemns (including Putin) that it makes little sense to have been a Putin assassination. Had Putin or any Western plotter wanted Litvinenko dead, they could have used any number of instantaneous means. Russian East plotters, in fact, may have been behind Litvinenko's death-- not Putin. - Reply to this comment
- Oh brother.
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- "Litvinenko .... converted to Islam before his death" well this is a strange twist too.
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