Russian agent's widow accuses Moscow of murder

LONDON: The widow of former Russian secret agent Alexander Litvinenko on Sunday accused Moscow of involvement in his murder, as the probe into who administered the fatal dose of radioactivity widened.   

In her first public interview since her husband's death on November 23, Marina Litvinenko backed his death-bed accusation that he was killed by a Russian "hit squad" because of his critical views of the Kremlin.   

"Obviously it was not (Russian President Vladimir) Putin himself," the 44-year-old told the Mail on Sunday. "But what Putin does around him in Russia makes it possible to kill a person on British soil.   

"I believe that it could have been the Russian authorities."  

Alexander Litvinenko, who according to his wife became a British citizen on October 13 this year, died in a central London hospital on November 23.   

Large quantities of the highly radioactive isotope polonium 210 were found in his urine.   

Marina Litvinenko told British Sunday newspapers that he immediately suspected he had been poisoned when he first fell ill on November 1, the sixth anniversary of their arrival in Britain. 

Anti-terrorism officers from London's Metropolitan Police said this week they were treating the death of the former lieutenant-colonel in the Federal Security Services (FSB) as murder.   

Litvinenko and his father Valter's accusations of Putin were supported on Sunday by the former agent's friend, Vladimir Bukovsky, who told the BBC he was convinced of "clear" Russian involvement.   

Meanwhile, the Sunday Telegraph said a jailed Russian dissident, Mikhail Trepashkin, had named a serving FSB colonel as a key figure in Litvinenko's poisoning, but Moscow had refused to allow British police to question him.   

A parallel Russian inquiry has been launched into Litvinenko's death and according to the Sunday Times, investigators there want to interview the exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky and Chechen leader Akhmed Zakayev.   

Litvinenko had close contacts with both men, who are also strongly critical of Russia and Putin. On the day he fell ill, Litvinenko was said to have been told that he and Berezovsky were on a Russian "hit list".   

But Marina Litvinenko told the Mail on Sunday she had more faith in the British investigation.   

The British government has not directly accused Russia of involvement. Prime Minister Tony Blair reportedly told senior ministers last week he feared the affair had the potential to cause a long-term diplomatic fall-out with Moscow.   

Bukovsky said on Sunday that Britain should take a stronger line, describing the death as a "direct challenge to (British) sovereignty" and a "casus belli" because of the involvement of a foreign state.   

"A British citizen was cowardly and brutally murdered on British soil," he told the BBC.   

Marina Litvinenko told the Sunday Times she and her husband thought they would be safe from their Russian enemies in Britain and that the man she called "Sasha" never felt he would become a target because of his outspoken views.   

A British Channel 4 television report this week quoted a senior British police source as saying that they believed Litvinenko was poisoned at the central London hotel where he met three Russian contacts on November 1.   

The Russian authorities have said that one of the men, businessman Dmitry Kovtun, was suffering from radioactive poisoning, while another former agent Andrei Lugovoi was undergoing tests in Moscow.   

Traces of polonium were found on a number of planes the men used to travel between London and Moscow before and after Litvinenko fell ill, while German investigators have found traces of polonium 210 at two flats linked to Kovtun.   

Kovtun has been interviewed by Scotland Yard detectives but the questioning of Lugovoi has been put back indefinitely.