“The evidence suggests that the only credible explanation is, in one way or another, that the Russian state is involved in Litvinenko’s murder.”

Scotland Yard lawyer — Court hearing in London (2015)

Aleksandr Litvinenko

On November 1st 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised in what was established as a case of poisoning by radioactive polonium-210. He died from the poisoning on November 23 2006. He became the first known victim of lethal polonium 210-induced acute radiation syndrome.  Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today

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Alexander Litvinenko (December 4 1962 – November 23 2006) was a British naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian FSB secret service who specialised in tackling organised crime.

According to US diplomats, Litvinenko coined the phrase Mafia state. In November 1998, Litvinenko and several other FSB officers publicly accused their superiors of ordering the assassination of the Russian tycoon and oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

Litvinenko was arrested the following March on charges of exceeding the authority of his position. He was acquitted in November 1999 but re-arrested before the charges were again dismissed in 2000.

He fled with his family to London and was granted asylum in the United Kingdom, where he worked as a journalist, writer and consultant for the British intelligence services.

Litvinenko also accused Putin of ordering the murder in October 2006 of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Intel Today would like to know what you think.

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Recent Developments

On January 21 2018, Judge Robert Owen — who chaired the British government inquiry into the Litvinenko killing — said he was certain Lugovoi and Kovtun killed Litvinenko by placing a lethal dose of polonium 210 in his tea during a meeting on November 1st 2006.

On January 22 2018, the UK issued the order to freeze the assets of Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun under the terms of the Antiterrorism, Crime, and Security Act of 2001.

Alexander Litvinenko’s murder: The inside story – BBC Newsnight  

Newsnight’s Richard Watson has been piecing together the story behind the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London.

He speaks to intelligence sources and key witnesses about the motives for the killing, the role of the Russian state and the polonium trail left in London.

Poisoned by Polonium : The Litvinenko File [Russian – English]

On November 23, 2006, these words, spoken on camera by exiled former KGB and FSB (post-communist Russia’s dreaded new secret police) agent Alexander “Sasha” Litvinenko, became a gruesome self-fulfilling prophecy.

After an agonizingly painful ordeal, Litvinenko succumbed to what was allegedly radiation poisoning from a lethal dose of toxic Polonium-210, surreptitiously slipped into his tea during a London meeting with two FSB ex-colleagues three weeks earlier.

In Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File, filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov exposes the truth behind a crime that shocked the world and provoked a war of words between Russia and England that continues to this day.

Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File is both a nuanced documentary requiem for a friend and a searing personal indictment of Vladimir Putin’s de facto dictatorship and Russia’s hidden history of tyrannical secret police repression going all the way back to the Tsars.

REFERENCES

U.K. Freezes Assets Of Two Suspects In 2006 Litvinenko Killing  — RFE

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Aleksandr Litvinenko — U.K. Freezes Assets Of Two Suspects

On This Day — Former FSB Officer Alexander Litvinenko Dies (November 23 2006)

On This Day — Former FSB Officer Alexander Litvinenko Dies (November 23 2006) [2019]