Ian Cobain, Jeevan Vasagar, Tom Parfitt
London
Guardian
Saturday, December 9, 2006
The assassins who poisoned Alexander Litvinenko
in a London hotel bar may have exposed themselves to a potentially
fatal dose of radioactivity, according to an FBI assessment of
the killing.
Tests which have revealed a trail of polonium-210 across more
than a dozen locations around the capital suggest the killers
could have ingested substantial amounts of the isotope.
Seven staff at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel on Grosvenor
Square have been poisoned with small amounts of polonium-210,
along with at least two business associates of the Russian ex-spy,
possibly after it had been dissolved in a solution which would
have evaporated during the poisoning.
Yesterday the Pine Bar was sealed off, with uniformed police
officers guarding the entrance. Two third-floor rooms were also
sealed off.
At least one of the seven contaminated hotel staff is said to
be on holiday, while others were still working. "They're
just not allowed to serve food at the moment," said a colleague.
The hotel worker, who is close to one of the seven staff contaminated
with polonium-210, said: "No one's batted an eyelid. There's
nothing you can do about it - so why worry? It's a 5% increased
chance of cancer in your lifetime, when you've got a 30% chance
of cancer anyway. Hopefully it will all blow over. It's just the
media and the police keep kicking it off."
Officials from the FBI, which has been asked to offer technical
assistance to the British investigation, have concluded that the
killers were not professionally trained to handle the substance.
This suggests the use of radioactive material made the killing
"as much a message as a murder", according to FBI sources.
The FBI has been helping British investigators trying to pinpoint
the source of the polonium-210. So far it has been able to establish
only that it was brought to London from Moscow.
Associates of the dead former spy have always insisted he was
murdered on the orders of the Kremlin in a manner intended to
terrify other emigres, an accusation which Russian president Vladimir
Putin has personally denied.
Yesterday Vladimir Bukovsky, a dissident who fled the Soviet
Union for Britain 30 years ago, said: "Terrorist acts are
always calculated to affect others. In this case I wouldn't say
it's especially addressed to the refugee community. It's addressed
to all Russians inside the country and outside, to say: 'We have
very long hands.' They are afraid of a revolution, which is rubbish,
it's not going to happen, but some individuals believe it may."
Russia's prosecutor-general says he too is investigating the
death of Mr Litvinenko and may ask permission for a team of Russian
detectives to fly to London.
A spokesman for the prosecutor-general's office said investigators
could request a meeting in London with Boris Berezovsky, the London-based
Russian multimillionaire, and with Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen
rebel envoy, both close associates of Mr Litvinenko. Russian politicians
have consistently suggested that Mr Berezovsky, who fled to London
in 2000 after falling out with President Putin, has used the death
of Mr Litvinenko as a "provocation" to discredit the
Kremlin, an allegation the businessman denies.
Mr Berezovsky said he would cooperate with the British and Russian
police. "I absolutely trust the British police and absolutely
don't trust the Russian," he said. "But even in a very
bad organisation there are some real people who really care to
know the truth, and maybe there is at least one in the Russian
police."
Two of Mr Litvinenko's business associates who stayed at the
hotel between October 31 and November 3 were undergoing tests
at an unnamed Moscow hospital yesterday. One, Dmitri Kovtun, was
said by Russian authorities to have suffered radioactive poisoning,
although there were conflicting reports about whether he is seriously
ill.
Mr Kovtun and another associate, Andrei Lugovoi, have both denied
any involvement in the incident and pledged to cooperate fully
with the British inquiry. Mr Kovtun was interviewed in the presence
of British police on Thursday, but Scotland Yard would not say
whether Mr Lugovoi had also been questioned.
Yesterday it also emerged that initial tests which suggested
that Mario Scaramella, an Italian associate of Mr Litvinenko,
had ingested large amounts of polonium-210 were either incorrect
or misread.
He is understood to have been poisoned with relatively small
amounts of the substance, is not thought to be in immediate danger,
and has been discharged from hospital.
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