48 Facts About Alexander Litvinenko

Alexander Valterovich "Sasha" Litvinenko was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service who specialised in tackling organized crime.

Alexander Litvinenko was acquitted in November 1999 but re-arrested before the charges were again dismissed in 2000.

Alexander Litvinenko fled with his family to London and was granted asylum in the United Kingdom, where he worked as a journalist, writer and consultant for the British intelligence services.

Alexander Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering the assassination of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.

On 1 November 2006, Alexander Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised after poisoning with polonium-210; he died from the poisoning on 23 November.

Alexander Litvinenko was born in the Russian city of Voronezh in 1962.

In 1981, Litvinenko married Nataliya, an accountant, with whom he had a son, Alexander, and a daughter, Sonia.

Alexander Litvinenko was assigned to the 4th Company of 4th Regiment, where among his duties was the protection of valuable cargo while in transit.

In 1991, Alexander Litvinenko was promoted to the Central Staff of the Federal Counterintelligence Service, specialising in counter-terrorist activities and infiltration of organised crime.

Alexander Litvinenko was awarded the title of "MUR veteran" for operations conducted with the Moscow criminal investigation department, the MUR.

Alexander Litvinenko saw active military service in many of the so-called "hot spots" of the former USSR and Russia.

Alexander Litvinenko met Boris Berezovsky in 1994 when he took part in investigations into an assassination attempt on the oligarch.

In 1997, Alexander Litvinenko was promoted to the FSB Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups, with the title of senior operational officer and deputy head of the Seventh Section.

Alexander Litvinenko wrote a memorandum about this issue for Boris Yeltsin.

Alexander Litvinenko gradually realized that the entire system was corrupt from the top to the bottom.

Alexander Litvinenko reported to Putin on corruption in the FSB, but Putin was unimpressed.

Alexander Litvinenko accused four senior officers of the Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups of ordering his assassination: Major-General Yevgeny Khokholkov, N Stepanov, A Kamyshnikov, and N Yenin.

In 2002, Alexander Litvinenko was convicted in absentia in Russia and given a three-and-a-half-year jail sentence for charges of corruption.

Shortly before his death, Alexander Litvinenko tipped off Spanish authorities on several organised crime bosses with links to Spain.

Alexander Litvinenko allegedly converted to Islam in Britain and was rumoured to have told his father he had converted to Islam on his death bed.

In spite of this, Alexander Litvinenko often travelled overseas with no security arrangements, and freely mingled with the Russian community in the United Kingdom, and often received journalists at his home.

Alexander Litvinenko published a number of allegations about the Russian government, most of which are related to conducting or sponsoring domestic and foreign terrorism.

Alexander Litvinenko stated that "all the bloodiest terrorists of the world" were connected to FSB-KGB, including Carlos "The Jackal" Ramirez, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Abdullah Ocalan, Wadie Haddad of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, George Hawi who led the Communist Party of Lebanon, Ezekias Papaioannou from Cyprus, Sean Garland from Ireland, and many others.

Alexander Litvinenko said that all of them were trained, funded, and provided with weapons, explosives and counterfeit documents to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide and that each act of terrorism made by these people was carried out according to the task and under the rigid control of the KGB of the USSR.

Alexander Litvinenko accused the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General-Staff of the Russian armed forces of having organised the 1999 Armenian parliament shooting that killed the Prime Minister of Armenia, Vazgen Sargsyan, and seven members of parliament, ostensibly to derail the peace process which would have resolved the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but he offered no evidence to support the accusation.

Alexander Litvinenko wrote two books, Lubyanka Criminal Group and Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within, where he accused the Russian secret services of staging the Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts in an effort to bring Vladimir Putin to power.

In September 2004, Alexander Litvinenko suggested that the Russian secret services must have been aware of the plot beforehand and probably had organised the attack themselves in order to toughen laws on terrorism and expand the powers of law enforcement agencies.

Alexander Litvinenko's conclusion was based on the fact that several Beslan hostage takers had been released from FSB custody just before the attack in Beslan.

Alexander Litvinenko said that they would have been freed only if they were of use to the FSB, and that even in the case that they were freed without being turned into FSB assets, they would be under strict surveillance that would not have allowed them to carry out the Beslan attack unnoticed.

Alexander Litvinenko was ordered to undertake the delicate mission of securing Al-Zawahiri from unintentional disclosure by the Russian police.

Two weeks before his poisoning, Alexander Litvinenko accused Vladimir Putin of ordering the assassination of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and stated that a former presidential candidate, Irina Hakamada, warned Politkovskaya about threats to her life coming from the Russian president.

Shortly before his death, Alexander Litvinenko alleged that Vladimir Putin had cultivated a "good relationship" with Semion Mogilevich since 1993 or 1994.

Alexander Litvinenko claimed that Anatoly Trofimov and Artyom Borovik knew of the alleged paedophilia.

Alexander Litvinenko made the allegation after Putin kissed a boy on his stomach while stopping to chat with some tourists during a walk in the Kremlin grounds on 28 June 2006.

Vladimir Bukovsky, a close friend of Alexander Litvinenko, said he was angry when he published the article, as he had strongly urged him against it.

Alexander Litvinenko was then moved to University College Hospital for intensive care.

Alexander Litvinenko's illness was later attributed to poisoning with radionuclide polonium-210 after the Health Protection Agency found significant amounts of the rare and highly toxic element in his body.

On his deathbed, Alexander Litvinenko claimed that Putin had directly ordered his assassination.

Scotland Yard stated that inquiries into the circumstances of how Alexander Litvinenko became ill would continue.

On 24 November 2006, a statement was released posthumously, in which Alexander Litvinenko named Putin as the man behind his poisoning.

Alexander Litvinenko said he was interviewed about his allegations by Scotland Yard detectives investigating Litvinenko's murder.

British media reported that the poisoning and consequent death of Alexander Litvinenko was not widely covered in the Russian news media.

On 7 December 2006, Alexander Litvinenko was buried within a lead-lined casket at Highgate Cemetery with Christian, Jewish and Muslim rites, including a Christian and Muslim prayer being said by an imam and Orthodox priest in line with Alexander Litvinenko's wishes of a non-denominational service at the grave.

On 2 October 2011, The Sunday Times published an article wherein the chief prosecutor who investigated the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, publicly spoke of his suspicion that the murder was a "state directed execution" carried out by Russia.

Many publications in Russian media suggested that the death of Alexander Litvinenko was connected to Boris Berezovsky.

The British Health Protection Agency made extensive efforts to ensure that locations Alexander Litvinenko visited and anyone who had contact with Alexander Litvinenko after his poisoning were not at risk.

The report found that Alexander Litvinenko was killed by two Russian agents, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun and that there was a "strong probability" they were acting on behalf of the Russian FSB secret service.

In May 2007 Marina Alexander Litvinenko registered a complaint against the Russian Federation in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, accusing the Russian state of violating her husband's right to life, and failing to conduct a full investigation.