A former Russian spy and fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin is fighting for his life in a London hospital after an apparent bid to kill him by poisoning, media reports said yesterday.
Alexander Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel in the Federal Security Service (FSB), fell ill after meeting at a London sushi bar a contact who purportedly had information on the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the Mail on Sunday said yesterday.
Litvinenko, who was granted political asylum in Britain in 2001, fled to Britain after blowing the whistle on an alleged FSB plot to assassinate Russian business oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who is also now living in Britain.
He reportedly fell out with Putin when the now president was head of the FSB in the late 1990s -- Litvinenko was charged with tackling corruption but did not feel Putin was doing enough about it.
He subsequently wrote a book called The FSB Blows Up Russia, claiming that the agency was linked to a series of apartment building bombings in 1999 which killed around 300 people. The bombings, blamed at the time on Chechens, were one of the reasons then prime minister Putin sent Russian troops back into Chechnya, a popular war that propelled him into the presidency in 2000.
Litvinenko fell ill shortly after his appointment with the mysterious contact on Nov. 1, media reports said.
The Sunday Times said Litvinenko met a man at a restaurant, who said he had information on the death of Politkovskaya.
"I ordered lunch but he ate nothing," the paper quoted Litvinenko as saying. "He appeared to be very nervous."
"He handed me a four-page document which he said he wanted me to read right away," he said. "It contained a list of names of people, including FSB officers, who were purported to be connected with the journalist's murder."
But Litvinenko added he was not in a position to accuse Mario of involvement in the poisoning.
University College Hospital in London confirmed with the Mail that Litvinenko was in a "serious but stable" condition, adding that he was under armed guard and had only a 50 percent chance of survival.
He had kidney damage, was constantly vomiting and suffered an almost total loss of white blood cells, the Sunday Times added.
The paper said he had been poisoned with thallium and quoted a medical report which showed he had a potentially fatal dose.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
RSS