The BBC reports that former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko has been poisoned in the UK where he currently lives after requesting political asylum in 2001. The report links the apparent attempt on Litvinenko’s life to the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya or an alleged plot to kill Boris Berezovsky.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former colonel in the KGB, told the BBC he fell ill after meeting a contact at a London sushi bar on 1 November.

Police say the 44-year-old is in a serious but stable condition in University College Hospital, London.

Clinical experts have confirmed he was given the highly-toxic metal thallium.

[…]

Clinical toxicologist John Henry, who examined Mr Litvinenko on Saturday, told the BBC he believes he was given a potentially lethal dose of thallium.

[…]

Mr Litvinenko’s friend Alex Goldfarb, who has been visiting him in hospital, said: “He looks terrible. He looks like a ghost actually. He lost all his hair. He hasn’t eaten for eighteen days.

“He looks like an old man…. a month ago he was a fit handsome young man.”

He added: “I think this is the work of the Russian Secret Service.”

Interestingly, I blogged about Litvinenko on Blogrel in 2005. Back then, Litvinenko alleged that Russian security service agents were behind the 27 October 1999 assassinations in the Armenian National Assembly that left then Prime Minister, Vazgen Sarksiyan, and Speaker of Parliament, former Soviet era boss of Armenia, Karen Demirchyan, dead. Russia denied the claims.

The Russian embassy in Armenia has denied reports that Russian special services were involved in the shooting at the Armenian parliament in 1999 that killed eight people including the then Armenian prime minister.

The embassy issued a statement quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency “in connection with recent press articles about the alleged involvement of the Russian special services in the tragic events at the Armenian parliament on 27 October 1999.”

[…]

Former Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Alexander Litvinenko said in various interviews that the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General-Staff of the Russian armed forces had organized the terrorist attack in the Armenian parliament. Litvinenko fled to the UK from criminal charges brought by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office. The embassy called him the “boss” to Nairi Unanyan who led the group of gunmen that attacked the parliament.

The statement said Litvinenko “is patronized [in the UK] by a well-known oligarch”, an allusion to Boris Berezovsky.

The gunmen killed the Armenian prime minister Vazgen Sarkissian, the parliament speaker Karen Demirchan and six ministers and deputies.

Anyway, the full BBC report can be found online here, and Litvinenko’s sensational claims about the 27 October 1999 terrorist attack on the Armenian Parliament can be found here.