“It is dangerous to be right, when the government is wrong”. A famous quote by French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist Voltaire (1694 – 1778). And still true as Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB agent and FSB lieutenant-colonel found out the hard way. Before his death on November 23rd nobody had probably ever heard of something called “polonium-210”. In fact it sounds like something from a bad spy movie. However, the truth seems more bizarre than any scenario from a cheap cloak and dagger novel. Litvinenko left Russia for the UK in 2000 after severly criticising his superiors on crime fighting issues. He then published two books criticising the government of President Vladimir Putin. On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill, was hospitalized, and died from a very rare case of polonium-210 poisoning.
Off course Russia – Putin – denies any involvement in the death of Litvinenko (as if he would ever admit to such a fact). Given the specific circumstances and the fact that Litvinenko was murdered in such a specific way, it is almost as if “they” wanted to set an example that would show other ex-KGB members that they better not talk too much. Go figure: there are many ways to kill someone and make it look like an accident: why choose such an obscure way? One would figure that this was only meant to be a warning message.
As Wikipedia reveals, Litvinenko accused Putin of all sorts of criminal things:
Litvinenko was a specialist in counter-terrorism and fighting organized crime. In 1998, he claimed that his superiors had ordered the killing of Boris Berezovsky, a Russian businessman who then held the high government post of Secretary of the Security Council and was close to President Boris Yeltsin; Berezovsky later fled to the UK. Litvinenko claims that he was dismissed from the FSB, and then arrested twice on charges which were dropped after he had spent time in Moscow prisons.
In 1999 he was arrested on counts of abusing duties during the anti-terrorist campaign in Kostroma. He was released a month later upon signing a written undertaking not to leave the country. Using his acquired freedom, Litvinenko fled before he could face the trial. He made his way without a passport to Turkey, where he joined his wife Marina and their son Anatoly, who had entered Turkey on tourist visas. On 1 November 2000, they immigrated to the United Kingdom, claiming political asylum, and in October 2006 he became a British citizen. He has extensively criticized President Vladimir Putin, particularly his position on Chechnya.
In the book Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, published in 2002 with the financial support of Berezovsky, Litvinenko alleged that agents from the FSB co-ordinated the 1999 apartment block bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people. Russian officials blamed the explosions on Chechen separatists. In December 2003 Russian authorities confiscated over 4000 copies of the book en route to Moscow from the publisher in Latvia. In the book Gang from Lubyanka (Лубянская преступная группировка), Litvinenko alleged that Vladimir Putin during his time at FSB was personally involved in organized crime.
Litvinenko stated in a June 2003 interview, with the Australian SBS television program Dateline, that two of the Chechen terrorists involved in the 2002 Moscow theater siege — whom he named as “Abdul the Bloody” and “Abu Bakar” — were working for the FSB, and that the agency manipulated rebels into staging the attack. Litvinenko said: “[w]hen they tried to find [Abdul the Bloody and Abu Bakar] among the dead terrorists, they weren’t there. The FSB got its agents out. So the FSB agents among Chechens organised the whole thing on FSB orders, and those agents were released.” However, this theory has not been widely supported.
In a July 2005 interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Litvinenko alleged that Ayman al-Zawahiri, along with other al-Qaeda leaders, was trained by the FSB in Dagestan (a republic neighboring Chechnya) in 1998.
In April 2006, a British MEP for London, Gerard Batten (UKIP), cited allegations by Litvinenko that Romano Prodi, the Italian Centre-Left leader (now Prime Minister) and former President of the European Commission, had been the KGB’s “man in Italy”. Batten demanded an inquiry into the allegations. He told the European Parliament that Litvinenko had been informed by FSB deputy chief, General Anatoly Trofimov (who was shot dead in Moscow in 2005,) that “Romano Prodi is our man (in Italy)”. According to Brussels-based newspaper the EU Reporter on 3 April 2006, “another high-level source, a former KGB operative in London, has confirmed the story”. Among Litvinenko’s most serious claims is that Prodi assisted in the protection of KGB operatives allegedly involved in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981.
If just 1 percent of the information above is true, I can see why Putin would want him dead.