Two more test positive in ex-spy’s poisoning

updated 4:06 p.m. ET Dec. 1, 2006

LONDON - An Italian security expert who met with former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko the day he fell fatally ill has tested positive for the same radioactive substance found in the ex-spy’s body, authorities said Friday. Litvinenko’s wife tested positive as well, a friend said.

The Italian security agent, Mario Scaramella, met with Litvinenko at a sushi bar in London on Nov. 1 — the day the former intelligence agent first reported the symptoms that ultimately led to his death.

The Italian tested positive for polonium-210, the rare isotope found in Litvinenko’s body, according to law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.

Litvinenko’s wife, Marine, had been “very slightly contaminated” by the radioactive substance found in her husband’s body, the former agent’s friend, Alex Goldfarb, told The Associated Press. He said she did not have to seek medical treatment.

Home Secretary John Reid confirmed that a member of Litvinenko’s family had tested positive for signs of polonium-210, but he did not name the person. Pat Troop, chief executive of Britain’s Health Protection Agency, said the family member faced a “very small” long-term health risk.

In Ireland, meanwhile, authorities also tested the hospital that treated former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar after he became violently ill during a conference last week — an incident his aides have described as another poisoning.

Dublin hospital risk being assessed
Irish health officials said tests were being carried out to gauge any risks to public health at the Dublin hospital, but they refused to say whether they were searching for traces of polonium.

Litvinenko died Nov. 23 at a central London hospital. Pathologists, wearing protective suits to guard against radiation, began an autopsy Friday.

At the Nov. 1 meeting with Litvinenko, Scaramella — who earlier this week said doctors had cleared him — discussed an e-mail he received from a source naming the killers of Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative journalist and Kremlin critic who was gunned down Oct. 7 in Moscow. The e-mail reportedly outlined that he and Litvinenko were also on the hit list.

In a letter released Friday by human rights activists, a former Russian security officer — now jailed — said he had also warned Litvinenko about a government-sponsored death squad that intended to kill him and other Kremlin opponents.

Litvinenko, 43, a Kremlin critic who lived in Britain, died at a London hospital. In a deathbed statement, he blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for his poisoning — charges the Kremlin rejected as “sheer nonsense.”

“Back in 2002, I warned Alexander Litvinenko that they set up a special team to kill him,” the former security services officer, Mikhail Trepashkin, wrote in the letter dated Nov. 23 — the day of Litvinenko’s death.

The letter was released by rights activists in Yekaterinburg, the center of the Ural Mountains province where he is serving his four-year sentence. Its authenticity could not immediately be confirmed.

A spokesman for Russia’s Federal Security Service, the KGB successor agency known by its Russian acronym FSB, refused to comment on Trepashkin’s claim.

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