Alexander Litvinenko

Col. Alexander Litvinenko

4 Dec 1962 - 23 Nov 2006

"You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value."

Main Page | News 10 Dec-Now | News 20 Nov-9 Dec | News 11-20 Nov

Here is the last statement of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who died in London on 23 November 2006, dictated from his deathbed on November 21:

"I would like to thank many people. My doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are doing all they can for me; the British police who are pursuing my case with vigour and professionalism and are watching over me and my family. I would like to thank the British Government for taking me under their care. I am honoured to be a British citizen.

"I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight. I thank my wife, Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds.

"But as I lie here I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like. I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition.

"You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women. You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.

"May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people."

Alexander Litvinenko
21 November 2006

Quotes from Walter Litvinenko's tribute to his son, which was translated by Alex Goldfarb and Andrei Nekrasov, two friends of the former spy:

"A terrible thing happened yesterday. My son died yesterday and he was killed by a little tiny nuclear bomb. It was so little that you could not see it. But the people who killed him have big nuclear bombs and missiles and those people should not be trusted."

"He was very courageous when he met his death and am proud of my son. He was a very honest and good man and we loved him very much. Now he is not with us."

"This regime is a mortal danger to the world. Sasha (Alexander) fought this regime. He understood it, and this regime got him and he is not with us any longer... If we let this go, if we go about our business as usual, this regime will get to all of us."

"Marina and Sasha were the most wonderful couple. They loved each other so much. They were so happy here in London, but the long hand of Moscow got them here on this soil. I feel extremely sorry for Marina, who has lost a wonderful, wonderful husband, as I have lost a wonderful son."

"If this regime falls, and I think it will fall, because a regime with no morality and conscience is doomed, then the street where Alexander was born in the city of Voronezh will be named after him... He will always be in our hearts and in the hearts of the Russian people."

Obituary: Alexander Litvinenko

Times of London, 25 November 2006

On April 23, 2002, Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian secret service, arrived at Heathrow, supposedly on a stopover before flying on to the Caribbean. Claiming that he was being persecuted by the Russian authorities, he sought political asylum.

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was born in 1962 in Voronezh, south of Moscow. After high school and extended service in the Soviet Army (in which his grandfather was an officer), he graduated from the Interior Forces Military Academy, joining the KGB in 1988.

While his early career was in espionage, by 1991 he had made a name for himself in the organised crime and anti-terror divisions. He also worked in the central apparatus, leading co-operation between the KGB, by then renamed the FSB, and the Moscow organised crime police squad. In 1997 he joined one of the FSB’s most secret departments, specialising in the pursuit of criminal organisations, and became its deputy head.

This exemplary career came to an abrupt end on November 18, 1998, when, in a press conference, he accused his FSB superiors of extortion, corruption and illegal assassinations. The accusations were detailed and seemed credible. He was suspended and in March 1999 arrested and held in isolation in the infamous KGB Lefortovo prison.

He was tried and acquitted in November 1999, but immediately rearrested. In 2000 charges were dropped after he promised to stay in Moscow. He and his family lived under intense surveillance and when they heard that further charges were being prepared, they fled. They flew to Turkey and from there to London.

Tried in absentia and sentenced to nine years in prison, Litvinenko found work in Britain as a postman, while his wife taught ballroom dancing. He continued his campaign against his former employers in interviews and books, and contributed anti-Russian material to a Chechen website. At the time of his death he was investigating the murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

He is survived by his wife Marina and his two children.

Alexander Litvinenko, former officer of the Russian secret service, was born on December 4, 1962. He died on November 23, 2006, aged 43

Quotes

"The bastards got me, but they won't get everybody."--Col. Alexander Litvinenko

“I suppose this is the cost of proving that you are telling the truth."--Col. Alexander Litvinenko on his deathbed

“I have been through a few things in Russia and Chechnya, but this is one of the most horrible crimes I have witnessed in my my life. It was sadistic, slow murder. It was perpetrated by somebody incredibly cruel, incredibly heartless. It had no meaning whatsoever.”--Andrei Nekrasov, filmmaker and Litvinenko friend

"He only had one enemy -- it was the head of the KGB, the KGB itself and Putin."--Col. Oleg Gordievsky

"This is just another confirmation of the criminal nature of the current regime. Litvinenko fell victim to the Russian security services. They resort to murder, and poison is one of the weapons they have used for decades."--Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin

"All his problems, the theater siege, Beslan and the results come from the fact [that] he doesn’t understand that each person has rights, that he is not a cog in a machine. Putin doesn’t understand that, he has own logic, it is the logic of a KGB officer in the Soviet Union — the worst type. The thing is that many people in our country share this view, many. But the life of a person is nothing. This Stalinesque psychology is very much alive in our country."--Human rights activist and journalist Anna Politkovskaya in an interview with BBC before her murder

"The birth of democracy was hard. But it was born, and he [Putin] is killing it. His years in the Kremlin have meant that the next generation will have to do a great deal, take a giant leap, to get out of the problems."-- Anna Politkovskaya

"Permission to assassinate abroad can only be given from the top. How can it not be state-sponsored?"--Col. Oleg Gordievsky

“Kremlin assassination tactics to remove and discredit Putin critics can no longer be ignored by the West.”--Akhmed Zakayev, a former Chechen political leader who lives next door to Mr Litvinenko in North London

"This is a Kremlin-backed operation of Russian intelligence services - whether it goes to the top of the Kremlin or to the top of the Russian secret service I cannot say."--Alexander Goldfarb, a Russian dissident who helped Litvinenko defect to Britain

"The KGB did kill abroad and their people still populate the top of Russia's current spy network."--Mark Galeotti, a specialist in Russian security at Keele university in Britain.

"It is difficult to know why Litvinenko was targeted but the theory is that this is a statement of intent to those who speak out against the regime. Those critics who feared for their lives always had the option to flee abroad. But the message now is: We can get you anywhere."--a Russian commentator with close links to the Russian intelligence services

"There can be no doubt that the FSB is both more powerful and more prepared to flex its muscles than for about 25 years."--a former KGB officer

Russian Intelligence

Sunday Herald, 27 November 2006

TO DISSIDENT Russian intelligence officers now in exile or in hiding around the world and British intelligence operatives, July 9 this year was a seismic date. On that day legislators in the Duma - the Russian state parliament - unanimously approved new laws which allowed Russia's Federal Security Service to hunt down and kill enemies of the state anywhere on the face of the Earth.

One British intelligence source said: "This marked a blatant return to the bad old days of the cold war when the KGB thought it could act with impunity anywhere it pleased."

These so-called "Hunter-Killer" powers also curtailed the right of the Russian media - already cowed and under the control of the Kremlin - to report on these operations. However, the enactment of these new laws only put on a legal footing powers which Russian intelligence had been using extra-judicially for years.

In Chechnya, the assassination of enemies of Russia is now so common that it scarcely bears comment, and in 2004 two Russian agents were arrested and sentenced to death in Qatar for the killing of exiled Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. The Russian team hunted him down and planted a bomb in his car. The Qatari court ruled that the killing was sanctioned by "the Russian leadership". The men were not executed but sent back to Russia following promises from the Kremlin that they would be imprisoned. Rumour has it that they were decorated for the assassination operation.

Akhmed Zakayev, a friend of Alexander Litvinenko and a former field commander in the first Chechen war who later became the deputy prime minister of Chechnya, says the killing of Litvinenko proved to the British people that Putin was "destroying democratic freedoms in Russia and beyond".

Zakayev, who beat an attempt by Russia to extradite him from the UK, added: "Putin is exporting his terror tactics in Chechnya to the UK and to London streets." Pointing out that Litvinenko had recently been granted British citizenship following his flight from Moscow after exposing criminal activities by Russian intelligence, Zakayev said: "Putin is now carrying out acts of terror against British citizens. Britain should see this as an act of terrorism against this nation."

British intelligence estimates that at least 30 Russian spies are operating in the UK. Most are from the GRU, Russian military intelligence, and the SVR, the overseas intelligence service equivalent to MI6. Most are based at the Russian embassy and have diplomatic status. As well as carrying out "traditional" espionage activities such as gathering military, political and industrial secrets, they are also believed to be focusing on Russian dissidents and Chechen rebels who are living in exile in the UK.

British intelligence sources are fearful of the UK's ability to tackle the gathering threat from the Kremlin. Counterespionage - monitoring the actions of foreign spies in the UK - now accounts for just 6% of MI5's budget. This drastic reduction in resources since the days of the cold war is down to MI5 being recalibrated to tackle the al-Qaeda franchise. The director of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, told parliament's intelligence and security committee that "there's not less of it foreign espionage about, but we are doing less work on it".

MI5 has stated that at least 20 foreign intelligence services are "operating against the interests of Britain ... and the greatest concern is aroused by the Russians". MI5 has also said that the number of Russian intelligence operatives in the UK has not declined since the Soviet era.

Putin has put spying at the heart of his foreign policy since his rise to power in 2000. The UK is a key target because of the country's status as "American ally number one", Britain's role as a key leading member of Nato and due to the fact that so many of Putin's enemies are now living in exile in the UK.

MI5 has issued bulletins to staff and other security and intelligence services asking them to keep track of the movement of Russian diplomats thought to be engaged in spying. One bulletin said that Russian intelligence posed a "substantial" threat to the UK. It also told recipients to keep a look out for Russian diplomatic car licence plates.

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, has had first-hand experience of the continuing attempts by Russia to spy on Britain. In 1996-97, he was first secretary to the British embassy in Warsaw, Poland, when Russian intelligence made a clumsy attempt to recruit him using sex as the lure.

He was due to attend a friend's stag night at an Irish bar in the centre of Warsaw but because of work commitments arrived two hours late. The barman informed him that his friends had moved on to a strip joint nearby. "When I arrived at the strip club," says Murray, "this Russian guy jumps up and calls me by my name and says I know you drink malt whisky, can I get you a Glenfiddich?'. With him were two beautiful Russian girls dressed in their underwear. He told me he was with a Russian trade delegation and said there was a limo outside and that I could take the girls to a house in the suburbs. I declined, made some small talk, finished my drink and then left."

Murray reported what he calls "this blatant attempt to recruit me" to British security officers at the embassy. They showed him a photo album of known Russian spies in Warsaw. "Unsurprisingly, my friend from the trade delegation' was in the book," Murray adds. "It was an astonishingly up-front and unsubtle approach." To this day, Murray is unsure whether the offer of sex with the Russian girls was an attempt to bribe him into working for the Kremlin or whether it was the set-up for a blackmail sting which would have coerced him into working for Russian intelligence.

Konstantin Preobrazhensky is a former lieutenant colonel in Russian intelligence. In 2003, after levelling harsh criticism against the Kremlin and its spying services, he came under harassment from the state and fled Russia. He now has political asylum status in the USA.

He has revealed to the Sunday Herald some of the key methods used by Russian intelligence to mount spying operations in Britain. The chief tactic is to target members of the huge Russian diaspora - made up of an eclectic mix of the descendants of White Russians who fled the country during the revolution, dissidents and their families who defected during the cold war and Russians who left the country following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

One route to the diaspora is through the Russian Orthodox Church in countries such as Britain and America. According to Preobrazhensky, Russian intelligence has long infiltrated the church and used it as a means to recruit emigre Russians and spy on dissidents and exiles.

"In the Soviet period, the Kremlin treated Russian refugees as traitors and enemies, but now it is turning them into its fifth column'," he says. "Specifically for this purpose, Putin has founded directorate EM' in his Foreign Intelligence Service. Its officers are working in every Western country, concentrating on local Russians."

Intelligence officers attract Russians overseas by appealing to their patriotism. "The communist idea has been replaced with the nationalistic one," Preobrazhensky says. The former spy adds that Putin aimed to turn the Orthodox Church abroad "into outposts of Russian state interests. Russian intelligence has penetrated the Orthodox Church and is utilising it for spying abroad."

Preobrazhensky, who plans to write about this phenomenon in his forthcoming book The KGB And The Russian Diaspora, points out that around a third of Russian Orthodox worshippers outside the borders of Russia are not native Russians but the children and grandchildren of immigrants. This, he says, gives the intelligence service a route to "ordinary" Britons and Americans who have no understanding of Russian life and are more vulnerable to exploitation.

"Westerners would think it unbelievable that a priest could be a spy - but in Russia is has been going on for almost 100 years," he adds. "Believe me - Russian Orthodox churches in the UK are infiltrated by Russian intelligence." The Sunday Herald contacted one Russian Orthodox church but the clergy there declined to comment on the allegations.

Preobrazhensky says that Russia's intelligence services had "dared" to kill Litvinenko as Putin "isn't afraid of the West at all. He believes they will never scold him as they think he is their friend". Preobrazhensky's words seemed to ring true last Friday when EU leaders met with Putin on the eve of an EU-Russia summit. Not one word was raised by Western leaders about the killing of Litvinenko. It was taken as an indication of just how dependent Europe now is on oil and gas-rich Russia.

"Russian intelligence is now very brave and bold," says Preobrazhensky. "In that way it differs from the old KGB as the KGB was afraid of condemnation from the West. Today, Russian intelligence is more like it was under Stalin - back then it ignored what the West felt and had no fear of the West."

Apart from spying on dissidents and exiles in the UK, Russian spies are effectively gathering intelligence on anything they can get their hands on. "They just gather intelligence for the sake of it," Preobrazhensky says. "They follow Trotsky's maxim that motion is all, the final point is nothing'. When I spied on China, intelligence could not explain why we were doing the spying.

"There are plenty of Russians in Britain - posing as businessmen or dissidents - who are working for intelligence. Great Britain is not prepared for this at all. Putin really does want to gain primacy over the West."

Preobrazhensky also believes that Russian intelligence has taken to working with organised crime around the world and suggested that criminals - either British or Russian - could have helped in the assassination of Litvinenko.

Vladimir Bukovsky, a Russian dissident who was a friend of Litvinenko and is close to the most famous KGB defector to Britain, Oleg Gordievsky, believes that Russian intelligence is also working hand-in-glove with the Russian mafia both at home and abroad.

"Litvinenko told me how Russian intelligence was merging with the underworld. In Soviet times, the motive was ideological, now it is simply about expanding influence and making and extorting money. He says that when dissidents or businessmen fled Russia because of persecution they were often pursued by intelligence agents.

"They recruit them by threatening to harm their families back in Russia." As many of these exiles fled Russia because they were facing trumped-up criminal charges, Russia also intimidates them into working for intelligence by threatening to have them extradited back to Moscow and imprisoned. Bukovsky and other dissidents have warned the British authorities that some extradition attempts are often politically motivated.

Once recruited, many Russian immigrants are forced to assist in money-laundering and drug-dealing, Bukovsky claims. They can also be used for more straightforward "traditional" intelligence-gathering. Bukovsky compares the modern Russian intelligence service to the criminal-terrorist network "Spectre" in James Bond movies. He says his friend, former top-ranking Russian spy Gordievsky, has told British intelligence the same thing. "Many in the intelligence services are also key figures in organised crime," Bukovsky adds.

Bukovsky is deeply disappointed in the West for not tackling this "emerging monster" despite warnings from dissidents such as himself. "Russia is now just implementing laws that the West didn't take a stand against."

Bukovsky's friend Gordievsky, once the head of the KGB in London before his defection, says that Russian intelligence is strengthened by the number of Russians living in the UK and working for British companies. "Each second Russian in a position of some importance is acting as an informer," he says.

Russia has also successfully bribed British citizens in order to gain UK secrets. Russia is desperate to stay a big defence industry player and has used spying to get commercial secrets in order to remain in the same league as Britain and America. In March 2003, Ian Parr of BAE Systems was jailed for 10 years for attempting to pass military secrets to the Russians. Parr, a former soldier from Essex, wanted £130,000 to provide secrets on a new stealth cruise missile. MI5 later trapped him.

But industrial espionage is the least of Britain's worries. One UK source closely linked to British intelligence told how he had a conversation with a Russian intelligence officer in 2004, in which the Russian spy spoke of the killing of a British citizen carried out by Russian agents. In January 2004, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Workman was found shot dead on his doorstep in the Hertfordshire hamlet of Furneux Pelham. The killing seemed completely motiveless.

However, the Russian intelligence source told his British contact that Robert Workman was killed in a case of mistaken identity. The real target had been a judge called Timothy Workman who lived not far from the scene of the murder.

In late 2003, Judge Workman infuriated the Kremlin when he rejected Russia's extradition request for Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen leader in London. Workman said that Zakayev faced a "substantial risk" of being tortured if he was returned to Moscow to stand trial. The Kremlin accused Workman of playing "cold war politics".

Also in 2003, Judge Workman called a halt to Russia's attempt to have Boris Berezovsky extradited from Britain. The billionaire oligarch had fallen out with Putin and has bitterly criticised the ruling regime. Berezovsky was also a close friend of Alexander Litvinenko.

British MEP Gerard Batten, of the United Kingdom Independence Party, also became an acquaintance of Litvinenko, who was his constituent. Earlier this year, following briefings with the dissident Russian spy, Batten relayed claims made by Litvinenko on the floor of the European parliament.

Batten said that before fleeing Russia, Litvinenko spoke to his friend, Colonel-General Anatoly Trofimov, a former deputy chief of the FSB the successor organisation to the KGB, seeking advice on which country he should seek asylum in. Batten told the European parliament: "Trofimov reportedly told Litvinenko, Don't go to Italy, there are many KGB agents there among the politicians. Romano Prodi current prime minister of Italy and former head of the European Commission is our man there'." Trofimov and his wife were murdered in Moscow in 2005.

Batten called for an inquiry into the claims, and later told the European parliament that Russian intelligence "is central to the institutionalised web of organised crime and corruption that dominates Russia. It is not possible to resign from Russian intelligence anymore than it is from La Cosa Nostra ... It is not acceptable that this situation is unresolved given the importance of Russia's relations with the European Union."

Alexander Litvinenko was known to want to testify about allegations regarding Russian intelligence links to European political leaders and Russian intelligence involvement within organised crime in Europe prior to his assassination.

Model spy went public to condemn his masters for murder

Tony Halpin in Moscow, Times of London, 20 November 2006

Alexander Litvinenko was a career soldier and a model spy, until he denounced his KGB masters in a sensational televised press conference in Moscow.

Flanked by fellow agents in balaclavas, he accused the FSB, the restyled KGB, of ordering him to assassinate the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky in November 1998. The head of the spy agency then was Vladimir Putin.

Mr Litvinenko, now 44, was a lieutenant colonel in the FSB’s elite unit fighting terrorism and organised crime. He claimed that many of his inquiries implicated top FSB officials in extortion and contract killings, a fact that he says he brought personally to Mr Putin’s attention only to be suspended shortly afterwards.

He was arrested for alleged corruption and placed in the FSB’s infamous Lefortovo prison. A court cleared him in November 1999, but he was rearrested and tried on fresh charges, only to be cleared a second time.

Mr Litvinenko fled Russia as a third case was being prepared. He arrived in Britain in October 2000 and has lived in London with his wife, Marina, and son, Anatoly, ever since.

Mr Litvinenko, who became a British citizen last month, alleged in a book published in 2002 that the FSB was behind bomb attacks in apartment buildings in Russia that killed 300 people in September 1999.

Mr Putin, then Prime Minister, had blamed the bombings on Chechen terrorists and, two weeks later, ordered troops into Chechnya to crush a separatist movement. Patriotic fervour stirred by the war swept Mr Putin into the Kremlin in the presidential election of March 2000.

He dismissed his former subordinate’s claims as “delirious nonsense”. Nevertheless, the FSB confiscated 4,500 copies of the book, Blowing Up Russia, for allegedly disclosing state secrets.

Before his decision to denounce his superiors, Mr Litvinenko had risen through the ranks of the Soviet military, which he joined from school in 1980. He joined the KGB’s counter-intelligence section in 1988 and was promoted to the central staff of the FSB in 1991.

He was convicted in absentia of abuse of office by a Moscow court in May 2002. He has become a close associate of Mr Berezovsky, who also fled to London in 2000. The billionaire businessman, who was given asylum in 2003, had supported Mr Putin in his rise to power but is now one of the President’s fiercest critics.

Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within by Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvinenko

Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy by Anna Politkovskaya

Articles

The KGB's Poison Factory

KGB's Legacy of Poison Politics

Poisoned by Putin

Anna Politkovskaya background

Akhmed Zakayev Interview, 5 Dec 06

Scaramella Interview, 4 Dec 06

Litvinenko Interview, 16 Nov 06

Trepashkin Case website

Sad fates of the president's critics

* Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in Moscow on 7 October. She was the author of several books that were highly critical of both Mr Putin and Russia's campaign to quell separatist sentiment in Chechnya. Nobody has been arrested in connection with her murder. Liberals believe she was killed by a heavy-handed state; the Kremlin believes that she was murdered to make Mr Putin look bad.

* Mikhail Khodorkovsky was once Russia's richest man but he began opposing Mr Putin. A Moscow court found him guilty of fraud and embezzlement and he is now in a Siberian prison.

* Leonid Nevzlin is a billionaire wanted for murder. He has incurred the Kremlin's wrath and now lives in Israel. He contends that the fraud and murder charges against him are fabricated.

* Boris Berezovsky is a critic of Putin who won political sanctuary in the UK. The Russian government regards him as a criminal and has unsuccessfully tried to have him extradited.

* Shamil Basayev was killed in July in "a special FSB operation". Few shed tears. Known as the Butcher of Beslan, Basayev was a terrorist who targeted civilians in his struggle for an independent Chechnya.

* Viktor Yushchenko, the President of Ukraine, still bears the facial scars of a horrific poisoning incident in 2004, a time when he was battling for the job against a pro-Russian contender.

* Mikhail Kasyanov was Putin's Prime Minister but was fired in 2004. He has styled himself as a presidential contender for the anti-Putin camp in 2008 but has been rubbished in the media.

Blacklisted: the men wanted by Moscow:

Oleg Gordievsky

Former deputy head of the KGB at the Soviet Embassy in London and a highly successful double agent for MI6. He joined the KGB in 1963 and was posted to Copenhagen, where he became disenchanted — a fact noticed by MI6, which recruited him. He was the KGB’s Resident-designate in London in 1982, but he was suddenly ordered back to Moscow and arrested in 1985. Although suspected and interrogated he was allowed to go home and contacted MI6, which managed to smuggle him out

Boris Berezovsky

Fugitive billionaire living in a Surrey and wanted in Moscow on massive fraud charges. A mathematician who began selling cars under perestroika and after the collapse of communism became Russia’s first billionaire. He became close to President Yeltsin and used his influence to increase his holdings in Aeroflot and several oil properties. Helped to finance Yeltsin’s second election campaign, then backed Putin in 2000 but the latter resented Berezovsky’s interference and opened investigations into his business dealings

Ahmad Zakayev

Former actor who became Minister of Culture in Chechnya — and at the start of the first Chechen war a general in the Chechen army. A political moderate, he negotiated with Russia to end the first war, and then became deputy prime minister. He was wounded in the second Chechen war and was granted political asylum in Britain in 2003. Now lives in London and is acting vice-premier of Chechnya’s underground government. Was accused by Russia of planning the Moscow theatre siege. A court turned down an extradition request, saying he was at risk of torture

Leonid Nevzlin

A right-hand man of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former owner of the Yukos oil company and now in a Siberian labour camp. He has been charged in Russia of a plot to kill individuals who posed a danger to Yukos. He claims that Putin is taking revenge for supporting his political opponents. Lives in Israel

Vladimir Gusinsky

Former theatre director who became one of Russia’s most powerful media magnates. Fell out with the Kremlin when NTV, his independent television station, became critical of the Chechnya war. In 2000 Gusinsky was accused of embezzlement and money laundering and was forced into exile in Israel, where he holds citizenship

BBC Profile: Alexander Litvinenko

BBC, 19 November 2006

Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian security agent fighting for his life in a UK hospital after allegedly being poisoned, has been a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin since before he became president in 2000.

Mr Litvinenko is thought to have been close to journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another opponent of the Kremlin who was shot dead last month, and said recently he was investigating her murder. It was after being handed documents apparently relating to the case that he was taken ill more than two weeks ago.

But he is perhaps best known for a book in which he alleges that agents co-ordinated the 1999 apartment block bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people. He now appears to have fallen victim to the kind of plots which he wrote about.

Arrest

Mr Litvinenko, 43, first became a security agent under the Soviet-era KGB, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in its later incarnations.

He is reported to have fallen out with Vladimir Putin, then head of the security service, in the late 1990s, after failing in attempts to crack down on corruption within the organisation. In 1998, he first came to prominence by exposing an alleged plot to assassinate the then powerful tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who himself now lives in self-imposed exile in the UK. He was subsequently arrested on charges of abusing his office and spent nine months in a remand centre before being acquitted.

In 1999 he wrote Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, in which he accused the current Russian security service, the FSB, of carrying out several apartment house bombings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people. The attacks, which Moscow blamed on Chechen rebels, helped swing public opinion behind Russia's second war in the breakaway republic.

Petrol bombs

Complaining of persecution, in 2000 Mr Litvinenko fled to the UK where he sought, and was granted, asylum. But after settling in an unnamed London suburb, the former spy continued to behave as if on the run, constantly changing his contact details. The Times newspaper reported that over the summer someone tried to push a pram loaded with petrol bombs at his front door. Appearing alongside high-profile opponents of President Putin, he has continued to make allegations about his former bosses. Perhaps most notably, he alleged that al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the FSB in Dagestan in the years before 9/11.