Hotel at centre of Litvinenko probe: BBC

LONDON: A central London hotel where former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko met contacts of his about three weeks before he died has become the centre of a police investigation, the BBC has reported.

Without citing its sources, the broadcaster reported on Thursday that it had been told that the working hypothesis was that the Millennium Hotel in central London, and not the Itsu sushi bar, was the focus of the inquiry into the ex-spy's death two weeks ago.

The BBC said that this was based on the fact that all seven staff working at the hotel's bar when Litvinenko visited have tested positive for the radioactive isotope that killed him, polonium-210.

By contrast, none of the staff at the sushi bar had tested positive for the radioactive substance.

Litvinenko met with two Russian contacts, Alexander Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun on November 1 at the hotel, and also met with another contact, the Italian academic Mario Scaramella, at the sushi bar on the same day. He fell ill that day.

Lugovoi earlier confirmed that he was on an October 25 British Airways flight from Moscow to London, but the BBC reported, citing an unidentified close friend of Litvinenko, that Lugovoi was in London on October 12.

The Kremlin critic Litvinenko died on November 23, three weeks after falling ill with what doctors subsequently determined was radioactive poisoning. He was buried on Thursday at Highgate cemetery in north London.