Days 3 and 4 – February 2nd and 3rd 

Small details can easily be muscled aside in big stories. But it is often the little things that provide the human context, especially where the subject matter is otherwise too extraordinary to allow such mundane issues to see much daylight. Marina and Anatoly Litvinenko, widow and son of Alexander, provided many such details in the evidence they gave over the last two days at the public inquiry into the Russian spy’s murder.

Marina described the evening of November 1st 2006 when Alexander first started vomiting, as he reacted to the radioactive polonium-210 he had supposedly ingested earlier that day. At first she thought she had added too much chilli to the chicken dish she had prepared for dinner in their Muswell Hill home.  Alexander moved into the spare room so as to allow Marina some sleep, so often was he dashing to the bathroom.  But within two days he was in Barnet General Hospital.

Having been transferred to University College Hospital and apparently aware he was  going to die, Alexander converted to Islam; an imam brought into the hospital specifically for that purpose. His father, Valter, arrived two days before Alexander died. Entering his hospital room Valter, a religious man, crossed himself. Alexander remarked, “Father, I am now a muslim”. “It doesn’t matter,” Valter replied, “at least you’re not communist.”

Earlier the inquiry had heard from Marina how Alexander had been a member of the Economic Security and Organised Crime unit (URPO), a secret part of the FSB (successor to the KGB) and little known even within the FSB itself.  He decided to speak out against the unit when Alexander Kamyshnikov, URPO’s deputy chief, allegedly told him to murder Boris Berezovsky, then a political advisor to the Russian President Boris Yeltsin, with the words: “you know Berezovsky – you will take him out.” In an ironic twist, after Mr Litvinenko aired these allegations Nikolai Kovalyov, head of the URPO (and a respected friend of Mr Litvinenko) resigned and Vladimir Putin took command. Marina suggested that her husband already knew of Putin’s alleged links to a St Petersburg crime syndicate, and that Mr Litvinenko’s disclosure of both the unit and it’s role in political assassinations immediately made an enemy of Putin. Thus started Mr Litvinenko’s estrangement from the Russian security apparatus, his arrest and imprisonment and eventual flight with his family from the “foul aroma of this political kitchen,” in his father’s words.

Marina’s evidence was impressively composed. On only three occasions did she falter. First, she showed extreme discomfort when discussing her husband’s allegations that Putin is a paedophile (allegedly evidenced by lifting a boy’s shirt to kiss his stomach – picture here). Whether she disagreed with her husband’s accusation or reacted to the subject matter we will not know. The second occasion was when tears came to her as she described the last conversation with her husband, on November 22nd 2006. As she was leaving the hospital he said “I love you so much.” She told the inquiry: “I tried to make a game, just like a joke, I said ‘Oh, finally’, because I haven’t listened this for a long time, because it’s usually, he says this every day, and I say, ‘I’m so happy you say it me’, and just, ‘See you tomorrow’, and ‘Everything will be fine’ “. She never saw him alive again.

The third occasion she appeared particularly animated was when questions were put to her regarding Mr Litvinenko’s relationship with MI6 (Britain’s overseas spy agency).  Among records of congestion charge payments and Tesco shopping, bank records showed a regular monthly payment from MI6 of £2000 (see here). This contradicted statements Marina had made to the Sunday Telegraph in 2007 denying he had ever been an agent for MI6. Technically, in the intelligence jargon, she was correct; Mr Litvinenko was a contractor on a rolling contract, not a salaried employee of MI6 and certainly not a paid informant directed by MI6 to provide information on specific organisations to which they have access (the usual description of an ‘agent’). But the meaning of the question would be clear to most and the paper ran the headline ‘Litvinenko’s widow denies MI6 link’ (see link). Her answer at the time was disingenuous and she appeared uncomfortable when it was raised.

More to follow…

All linked material reproduced here is courtesy of the Litvinenko Inquiry –www.litvinenkoinquiry.org.