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LONDON - A Russian security service defector is critically ill in a London hospital after being poisoned in a sushi bar.
Former Russian colleagues have been accused of trying to kill him, and a specialist says he has only a 50-50 chance of recovery.
Alexander Litvinenko, a former lieutenant-colonel with Russia's FSB security service and a critic of President Vladimir Putin, fled to Britain in 2000, saying he feared for his life.
Yesterday the Metropolitan Police said he was in a "serious but stable" condition.
Litvinenko, 44, was sentenced in absentia for treason and is wanted in Russia on charges of exceeding his authority while in the FSB and illegally storing explosives at his home. He denies the charges, and has said they are fabricated.
He was taken to hospital after he was poisoned with thallium, a heavy metal that damages the nervous system, lungs and kidneys. Colourless and odourless, it is used in rat poisons in the Middle East, but is hard to obtain in Britain.
The Sunday Times reported that Litvinenko had damage to his kidneys and bone marrow, was vomiting regularly and had lost his hair.
Litvinenko told associates he became ill after lunching in a Japanese restaurant near Piccadilly Circus in London on November 1, the sixth anniversary of his arrival in Britain. He gained British citizenship last month.
His lunch companion was Italian information-peddler Mario Scara-mella, who is alleged to have links with Russian intelligence.
He is said to have given Litvinenko documents purporting to show that Russian agents were implicated in the murder of Russian investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot at her Moscow apartment building last month.
Last week the Chenchenpress internet news agency published an interview with Litvinenko. He refused to say who he believed had poisoned him, but said the documents he was given named FSB agents in connection with the journalist's murder. "Judging by these documents, the tracks of the murder of Politkovskaya are leading to the FSB," he said.
He promised to give the documents to Politkovskaya's paper, Novaya Gazeta, when he recovered.
But a specialist said yesterday that his chances of survival were "50-50". The former security agent became seriously ill within two hours of the meeting with Scaramella. There is no suggestion that Scaramella had anything to do with the poisoning. Litvinenko suspects the toxin was in a cup of coffee. Police are believed to have him under heavy guard, fearing further attempts on his life.
"Officers from the specialist crime directorate are investigating a suspicious poisoning," said a Metropolitan Police spokesman. "No arrests have been made."
The affair has recalled the 1978 murder of a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, allegedly stabbed with a poisoned umbrella in a London street. In 2004 Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-Western Ukrainian President, was poisoned with dioxin during the election campaign which brought him to power. His supporters claim Russian or Ukrainian security services were involved.
Litvinenko fell out with the Kremlin when he claimed his FSB bosses had ordered him to assassinate Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. He fled to Britain, where he was given political asylum.
In 2003, he tipped off Scotland Yard about what he said was a plot to kill Putin. The police arrested two Russians, but released them days later on condition they returned to Moscow.
He wrote a book alleging the security service blew up Moscow apartment blocks in 1999, killing hundreds, and framed Chechen separatists.
He has also suggested the terrorists responsible for the 2004 Beslan school siege may have been acting under FSB orders, and that al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is a former KGB agent.
- INDEPENDENT
