|
 The
wife of an ex-KGB
agent fatally poisoned in Britain and the Italian security
expert he met the day he fell ill both showed traces of
the same radioactive substance found in the dead man's
body, friends and officials said Friday.
 The
inquiry into the death of
Alexander Litvinenko
widened with the new positive test results, the evacuation
of a hotel in southern England, and the sweep of an Irish
hospital that treated a Russian opposition leader for what
his aides described as poisoning. In Italy, the government
sought to reassure the public there was no danger.
The Italian,
Mario Scaramella,
was hospitalized in protective police custody after tests
confirmed he had been exposed to
polonium-210,
the rare isotope found in Litvinenko's body before he died
Nov. 23.
"My son has been poisoned," the Italian's
father, Amedeo Scaramella, said by telephone. He then said
he was too distraught to talk and hung up.
Scaramella was exposed
to a much lower level of radiation than Litvinenko,
doctors treating him at London's
University College Hospital
said. He has shown "no symptoms of radiation poisoning,"
hospital spokesman Keith Paterson said.
Italian news agency ANSA reported that a
female companion of Scaramella was being tested for traces
of radiation but British health officials could not
immediately confirm that.
Litvinenko's wife, Marina, was also "very
slightly contaminated" by the radioactive substance found
in her husband's body, the former KGB agent's friend, Alex
Goldfarb, told The Associated Press. He said she did not
need medical treatment.
Home Secretary
John Reid
confirmed that a member of Litvinenko's family had tested
positive for signs of polonium-210, but he did not name
the person. Pat Troop, chief executive of Britain's Health
Protection Agency, said the relative faced a "very small"
long-term health risk.
It was not immediately clear how Scaramella
or Litvinenko's wife may have been exposed to the
polonium-210. They could have come into contact directly
with the substance or been exposed through contact with
Litvinenko, who could have excreted trace amounts through
his perspiration.
Litvinenko died Nov. 23 at a London
hospital and pathologists, wearing protective suits and
face-covering helmets to guard against radiation, began an
autopsy Friday. Results were not expected for several
days.
 At
the Nov. 1 meeting at a sushi restaurant with Litvinenko,
Scaramella discussed an e-mail he received from a source
naming the killers of Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative
journalist and Kremlin critic who was gunned down Oct. 7
in Moscow. The e-mail reportedly said Scaramella and
Litvinenko were also on the hit list.
In a letter released Friday by human rights
activists, a former Russian security officer — now jailed
— said he had also warned Litvinenko about a
government-sponsored death squad that intended to kill him
and other Kremlin opponents.
Litvinenko, 43, a
Kremlin critic who lived in Britain, died at a London
hospital. In a deathbed statement, he blamed President
Vladimir Putin
for his poisoning — charges the Kremlin rejected as "sheer
nonsense."
"Back in 2002, I warned Alexander
Litvinenko that they set up a special team to kill him,"
the former security services officer, Mikhail Trepashkin,
wrote in the letter dated Nov. 23 — the day of
Litvinenko's death.
The letter was released by rights activists
in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, the center of the
Ural Mountains province where Trepashkin is serving his
four-year sentence. Its authenticity could not immediately
be confirmed.
A spokesman for Russia's Federal Security
Service, the KGB successor agency known by its Russian
acronym FSB, refused to comment on Trepashkin's claim.
Trepashkin was arrested in October 2003 and
convicted on charges of divulging state secrets while
investigating allegations of FSB involvement in apartment
bombings that killed about 300 people in Moscow and two
other cities in 1999. The government blamed the explosions
on Chechen-based rebels, but Litvinenko and other Kremlin
critics alleged they were staged as a pretext for
launching the current Chechnya war.
The FSB, where both Trepashkin and
Litvinenko worked, alleged that Trepashkin had been
recruited by British agents to collect compromising
materials on the explosions with the aim of discrediting
the Russian security agency.
Trepashkin said in his letter that after
his arrest authorities put him in a cell contaminated with
poisonous chemicals and threatened to kill him.
"Litvinenko and I aren't the last in this
chain of victims of persecution," he wrote. "Maybe
Litvinenko's death could make you believe in what he was
saying."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said
Moscow was ready to answer concrete questions from Britain
concerning Litvinenko's death, Russian news agencies
reported.
"When the questions are formulated and sent
through the existing channels, we will consider them
thoroughly," Lavrov was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass
news agency. "Now the ball is on the English side, and
everything depends on the British investigators."
In Ireland, meanwhile, authorities tested
Dublin's James Connolly Memorial Hospital, which treated
former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar after he became
violently ill during a conference last week — an incident
his aides have described as another poisoning.
Irish health officials said tests were
carried out to gauge any risks to public health, but said
they found no traces of radiation.
Gaidar, 50, who served briefly as prime
minister in the 1990s and is one of the leaders of a
liberal opposition party, began vomiting and fainted
during a conference in Ireland on Nov. 24.
His daughter, Maria, said in Moscow that
his life was no longer in danger and he was slowly
recovering.
"It seems to me that it's probable that he
was poisoned. I think that it could be somehow connected
with Litvinenko, I don't know how, but it seems so
strangely connected in the time and even geographically
connected," she told AP Television News.
Irish police have launched an inquiry into
Gaidar's illness, but they said the investigation was
routine and should not worry the public. "Tracing the
movements of the subject and establishing the facts is the
focus" of the investigation, police said.
Traces of radiation have been found at a
dozen sites in Britain and five jetliners were being
investigated for possible contamination.
A hotel in Sussex, southeastern England,
was briefly evacuated Friday as police and health workers
carried out tests for polonium-210. The hotel, set in 186
acres of countryside, had been visited by Scaramella after
he met with Litvinenko, authorities said. It was later
reopened.
"Police said they found nothing of any
concern," said Graeme Bateman, the hotel's managing
director.
Traces of radiation were found on three
British Airways planes that have traveled the
Moscow-London route since Nov. 1.
In 1998, Litvinenko publicly accused his
superiors of ordering him to kill Russian tycoon Boris
Berezovsky. He spent nine months in jail from 1999 on
charges of abuse of office but was later acquitted and
sought asylum in Britain.
Trepashkin's letter also mentioned official
targeting of Berezovsky.
|
