Alexander Litvinenko inquiry shown picture of spy taken day before he died
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Version 0 of 1. A previously unreleased photograph of Alexander Litvinenko, taken the day before the former Russian spy died from polonium poisoning, has been shown to the public inquiry into his murder. The still was taken from a video made by the Russian director Andrei Nekrasov. It shows Litvinenko gaunt and emaciated on his hospital bed, and is the last image of him alive, the inquiry heard. Nekrasov interviewed Litvinenko on 22 November 2006 in University College hospital, London, hours before he slipped into a coma. He died on the intensive care ward the next evening. Giving evidence, Litvinenko’s friend Alex Goldfarb said that Litvinenko was adamant the world should be told that the Kremlin and [Vladimir] Putin were responsible for poisoning him. Litvinenko fell ill after meeting two Russian contacts – Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun – on 1 November 2006 in a Mayfair hotel. They allegedly put polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope, into Litvinenko’s green tea. Litvinenko agreed when his conditioned worsened that a photo of him should be circulated to the media. The PR executive Sir Tim Bell arranged the now-famous photograph of Litvinenko, bald, propped upright, and attached to electro-cardiogram sensors. It shows him staring defiantly at the camera. That was taken on 21 November. The new image from a day later shows how markedly Litvinenko had deteriorated. He is lying horizontally on his bed, a feeding tube in his nose, scarcely able to open his eyes, and barely conscious. Weak daylight fills the room. Nekrasov was allowed to film the dying Litvinenko on condition the film would remain private to his family, the inquiry was told. Earlier, Goldfarb described how he had helped Litvinenko move to the UK, after he escaped from Russia and fled to neighbouring Georgia. The Georgian oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili obtained a fake Georgian passport for Litvinenko, Goldfarb said. From there Litvinenko flew out to Turkey, with Goldfarb meeting him there, together with Marina Litvinenko and their son Anatoly. Fearful that Russian spies were on their tail, Litvinenko went to the US embassy in Ankara. He requested political asylum. The embassy debriefed him for some hours but turned down his request. Goldfarb said they then considered other options, with Patarkatshishvili offering to send his yacht. Another possibility was to fly to the US via Barbados. In the end Goldfarb recommended buying tickets to the Georgian capital Tbilish via London, for which no transit visa was required. The plan was to claim asylum at Heathrow. At terminal three, Litvinenko was eventually allowed to enter the UK. Goldfarb, however, said he was deported the next day, with the British authorities banning him for a year. He told police: “I want to go to [my home in] New York.” They replied: “No no, you are going to Istanbul.” The operation to rescue Litvinenko cost $130,000 (£85,000), with Boris Berezovsky – Litvinenko’s friend and patron – picking up the bill, Goldfarb said. In Britain, Litvinenko waged a remorseless campaign against Putin, Goldfarb said. He described his friend as a dedicated person who was frequently obsessional in his work. Asked whether he thought Litvinenko was a conspiracy theorist, Goldfarb replied: “At the time I thought so.” He added wryly: “After what happened since I became a conspiracy theorist myself.” Goldfarb also described how Berezovsky funded Litvinenko’s various activities, including the writing of two highly critical anti-Kremlin books, one of them smuggled in a truck from Latvia across the Russian border. Berezovsky was once a keen Putin fan, Goldfarb said. He fell out with Russia’s president in 2000 after his TV station ORT was raided, fleeing to France and then Britain. “If you take a cynical view it was a matter of control. If you take a principled view it was a matter of political philosophy. Putin from the outset was hard-line with regard to the Chechens and basic press freedoms. Berezovsky didn’t like it. His political past was connected with Chechnya. Plus his power-base was in the independent media,” Goldfarb said. At first Berezovsky paid Litvinenko $6,000 a month. The money got smaller after Litvinenko began working from 2003 onwards for the British secret intelligence service, MI6. Goldfarb said he knew about this clandestine role, and once met one of Litvinenko’s MI6 handlers. He said MI6 was not happy about Litvinenko’s close association with Berezovsky. The spy agency took him on as an expert consultant on Russian organised crime. But it failed to offer him a full-time job – something that left Litvinenko disappointed and a “little worried” about cash-flow. The inquiry also heard that Litvinenko told detectives he began feeling sick on 1 November 2006, six or seven hours after he met Lugovoi and Kovtun. “I started to feel nauseous. I started vomiting and 20 minutes later I vomited again.” He drank two jugs of water mixed with magnesia to cleanse his stomach, which had no effect. “After that the vomiting didn’t stop,” he told detectives. “I started having foam [coming] out of my mouth, and bits of stomach with blood coming were coming out, too. I realised I had been poisoned. I told my wife I had been poisoned.” The inquiry continues. |