Comment

As the mystery surrounding the death by poisoning of Russian spy Alexander Litvinenkogets murkier, for me the episode holds a certain poignancy. I knew Litvinenko — or Sasha, as he was known to friends — in London a few years ago, when he was seeking asylum. I also met his attractive wife Irena. Sasha was using a law firm which I had an association with and a close friend of mine was acting for him as solicitor. Although his English was broken, he could be friendly and, like many senior KGB operatives — indeed, like his nemesis, Vladmir Putin — he was well travelled. He was good-looking and had a certain raffish charm. At that time he was close to one of the great oligarchs, Boris Bezerovsky, the media baron, currently in exile in London. He was very much Boris’s man; I do not think I am divulging any confidences by stating that it was Boris who funded him in England.

Sasha enjoyed regaling us with stories from his KGB past. He was familiar with several high profile Indian arms deals, where significant politicians were paid off in Switzerland as an inducement to favour the purchase of Soviet arms, but Sasha could be a tease and would not let on about the names or the deals, even after a few vodkas. He was also fairly explicit on the KGB’s method of disposing of people, particularly people such as informers who had outlived their usefulness. It was invariably — a walk in the woods, a gun to the temple, a trigger pulled and it was all over. He told us that during his time in the KGB, he was involved either directly or indirectly in at least a hundred such assassinations. Since then, the phrase ‘a walk in the woods’ has acquired for me a certain sinister quality.

His importance, however, was the extent to which he exposed the dirty tactics of Vladmir Putin, accusing Putin of being behind the bombings of the apartment buildings in Moscow — the cassus beli for Putin cracking down on the Chechens. He alleged that this was something planned by Putin to outrage public opinion sufficiently so he could harness it against the Chechens in a particularly vicious and brutal military campaign. Sasha’s importance lay in the fact that few senior KGB operatives defect; if they are considered unreliable, they are disposed of or neutralised. He realised that his time was up and managed to make it to Britain with his family; he was the survivor and party to many a KGB secret. Unfortunately, other members of his family were made an example of, back home.

Behind the humour and boisterousness was the feeling that he was a marked man. This feeling became even more apparent when the Russian government decided to hire rooms in a building across from the lawyers’ office in Carter Lane in London, and maintained a permanent camera to create a record of who came and went. Even more sinister were the burly men in dirty raincoats and sunglasses who followed Irena to my sister’s flat at St John’s Wood and hung around outside. These were markers from the Russians, telling Sasha that despite his seeking asylum, in truth there could be no sanctuary for someone who had so betrayed his masters.

The story of Sasha and his appalling death may be seen from various perspectives. But one that I consider to be important is that Sasha’s testimony represents a standing reproach to the war against terror as framed by President George Bush. As Indians, we do not have sufficient cynicism about these terms, which certain political parties have appropriated as having wholesale validity to our situation. If Bush fudged the evidence regarding weapons of mass destruction as an excuse for unleashing the wholly unnecessary invasion of Iraq, Putin may have blown up hundreds of innocent Muscovites in an attempt to bolster a military presence in Chechnya —both apparent blows in the war against terror and incidents which resulted in large-scale bloodshed and human rights violations far exceeding anything any terrorist could achieve. The so-called ‘war against terror’ has in many cases resulted in the use of unbridled state terror against minorities with the excuse of links with international terrorism, without any need for justification, legal or otherwise.