Poloniumania: British cops eye shadowy group of former Russian agents; Update: Killer ID’d?

Loose cannons or Putin puppets with just enough independence to give him plausible deniability?

A ruthless assassin known as Igor is being hunted over the poison murder of a former Russian spy that yesterday threatened to spark a fully-blown diplomatic row.

The trained killer – part of a group of ex-KGB spies called ‘Dignity and Honor’ – was named in a document passed to police by Alexander Litvinenko shortly before he lost consciousness and died…

The papers reveal that ‘Dignity and Honor’ are loyalists waging their own Cold War campaign against critics of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

That article’s five days old but the Telegraph has new info on Dignity and Honor in today’s issue, including the name of the leader and some of their past “loyalist” activities. Supposedly they’re hunting Boris Berezovsky, the exiled billionaire and archenemy of Putin, and his associates, of whom one was Alexander Litvinenko. Quote:

The [document] handed to Litvinenko was written by Evgueni Limarev, whose father served with the KGB in the 1970s and who now lives in Switzerland, specialising in researching such groups.

In the message he also accuses the group of involvement in the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist shot dead on the doorstep of her Moscow apartment as she prepared to make more revelations about human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Who handed the document to Litvinenko? Why, Mario Scaramella — who, according to the Telegraph, was also named as a potential target of D&H. Which raises the question: was he deliberately poisoned too or did he just happen to inhale some of the stuff that was meant for Litvinenko? This ain’t no accident, says ToL:

Toxicologists confirmed yesterday that Mr Scaramella had also been contaminated by a “significant” amount of deadly polonium-210. The level leads them to suspect that it was more than he could have ingested from simple physical contact with Litvinenko.

Radiological experts also say that the amount is more than he could have inhaled from being close to Litvinenko had he coughed or sneezed…

There is a suspicion that Litvinenko’s mobile telephone was bugged and the surveillance team knew of his meeting with the Italian security expert, who had taken part in a parliamentary investigation in Rome into KGB dirty tricks.

The amount he ingested is far less than what took Litvinenko down, doctors say, and he’s showing no sign of radiation poisoning right now, so he might walk away from this with nothing more than an elevated long-term risk for cancer. (Emphasis on “might”: it can take up to four weeks for symptoms to develop and, in the words of one doctor, the quantity here is such as to pose a threat to his “immediate health.”) How does that square with the deliberate-poisoning theory, though? How could they hit Litvinenko with a fatal dose — enough to kill him 100 times over, according to the Guardian — and then not even manage to knock Scaramella off his feet?

And another thing. That same article claims the amount of polonium that felled Litvinenko could have cost as much as £20m to acquire. Why on earth would anyone have gone to such expense to assassinate such a minor figure?

Dignity and Honor isn’t the only suspect, either:

Alexander Litvinenko may have been killed after a deal that went wrong with associates involved in the ruthless world of Russian business…

In the six years that he was in Britain, Litvinenko appeared to have acquired a formidable collection of friends and enemies. Although he described himself as a journalist, Litvinenko tried unsuccessfully to muscle in on several lucrative business deals with Russians.

On the day that he fell ill he was attempting to broker a gas and oil exploration deal involving a British conglomerate that he claimed to represent. He was envious of the money that many of his former colleagues were making.

Again, if that’s the case, then how’d the Italian guy end up in the middle of it?

Meanwhile, four Greeks who stayed in the same hotel that Litvinenko visited are being tested for radiation tonight. The former Russian PM who was poisoned in Ireland has supposedly been cleared, but that’s what they said about Scaramella and Litvinenko’s wife originally, didn’t they?

Update: The News of the World claims to know who “Igor” is and how the poisoning might have gone down:

It has neem revealed that Litvinenko was poisoned with a massive overdose of the deadly polonium-210. A Whitehall source told the News of the World: “A few microbes would be fatal, but we think he had a TEASPOON’S worth—more than a billion times what was needed to kill him.”

Experts believe the poison was delivered in a liquid solution in drink. After learning of the “worryingly high” levels of radiation discovered at the sushi bar, the government issued its plea for customers — and those of the Millennium Hotel’s Pine Bar, which was yesterday sealed off — to contact NHS Direct.

Update: A new bombshell from the Telegraph for Sunday’s edition. Not only does Russia allegedly have 30 spies working in Britain — a Cold War level — but the chances that Litvinenko’s assassins were loose cannons are exceedingly slim:

The startling intelligence was presented last week to Cabinet ministers at a Cobra meeting, where they are briefed on issues of national security. They were also told that Mr Litvinenko, a former KGB agent, who died 10 days ago, was “most probably” murdered by “state sponsored” assassins, with the radioactive poison polonium 210 and that suspicion centred firmly on Moscow.

A source said: “The Russian intelligence services are highly bureaucratic and legalistic. There isn’t a great deal of room for personal initiative, everything has to be officially authorised and signed off. And this murder would have been a highly complex operation involving many people not one or two acting in isolation.”

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