Accusations fly over poison death
By Sophie Walker in London
November 26, 2006 09:21am
Article from: Reuters
BRITISH officials sought overnight to allay public health fears following the killing by radiation poisoning of a former Russian spy who blamed his death on President Vladimir Putin.
Police were scrutinising security camera footage taken when Alexander Litvinenko, a Kremlin critic who became a British citizen last month, met contacts in a sushi restaurant and a London hotel before falling ill.
Mr Litvinenko died on Thursday night after a three-week illness that saw his hair fall out, his body waste away and his organs slowly fail. In a statement read out after his death, he accused Mr Putin of what would be the Kremlin's first political assassination in the West since the Cold War.
"You may succeed in silencing one man. But a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life," he said.
The British government said overnight that Mr Litvinenko's body had been moved from the hospital where he died to a London mortuary.
"All the necessary health and safety precautions were taken after a full risk assessment by the Health Protection Agency. The body is now the responsibility of the coroner."
Asked whether a post-mortem would be conducted, a government source said: "The question ... is being considered against the difficulty there may be in opening him up." >>>cont
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ABC News JIM SCIUTTO November 25, 2006 04:04 PM
One by one, police are retracing the last steps of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB spy turned Kremlin critic who officials determined was fatally poisoned by a rare radioactive substance.
Police are carefully testing all the places and people he came into contact with after his poisoning with radioactive polonium 210 -- his home, the hospital where he died, the sushi restaurant where a friend warned him his life was in danger.
READ FULL STORY
One by one, police are retracing the last steps of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB spy turned Kremlin critic who officials determined was fatally poisoned by a rare radioactive substance.
Police are carefully testing all the places and people he came into contact with after his poisoning with radioactive polonium 210 -- his home, the hospital where he died, the sushi restaurant where a friend warned him his life was in danger.
READ FULL STORY
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 6:15 PM
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