Chapter 8: Russian State responsibility – motive and evidence of similar deaths and killings
Chapter 8: Russian State responsibility – motive and evidence of similar deaths and killings
¶Motive 9.118 In chapter 1 of Part 4 above, I have addressed at some length the question of whether
elements within the Russian State might have had a motive for killing Mr Litvinenko. I have also referred, in paragraph 5.27 above, to the article that Mr Litvinenko published in July 2006 accusing President Putin of being a paedophile.
¶9.119 I consider that there were several reasons why organisations and individuals within
the Russian State might have wished to target Mr Litvinenko, including to the point of killing him, by late 2006. These reasons overlapped and their effect was no doubt cumulative. By way of summary, I shall identify five core themes that emerge from my analysis in the earlier sections of the Report.
¶9.120 First, Mr Litvinenko was regarded as having betrayed the FSB as a result of the
public disclosures that he made before he left Russia, in particular his claim that he had been ordered to kill Mr Berezovsky. This idea of betrayal was compounded by Mr Litvinenko's campaigning activity in the UK. The two books that he wrote accused the FSB of responsibility for the 1999 apartment bombings and of collusion in organised crime.
¶9.121 Second, according to Mr Lugovoy the FSB also received information that Mr Litvinenko
was working for British intelligence, and that he had tried to recruit Mr Lugovoy to do so too.
¶9.122 Third, Mr Litvinenko was a prominent associate of both Boris Berezovsky and Akhmed
¶Zakayev, both of whom were leading opponents of the Putin administration.
¶9.123 Fourth, the causes espoused by Mr Litvinenko – such as the FSB's alleged responsibility
for the apartment bombings, the war in Chechnya, and alleged collusion between President Putin and other members of his administration and organised crime – were areas of particular sensitivity to the Putin administration.
¶9.124 Finally, there was undoubtedly a personal dimension to the antagonism between
Mr Litvinenko on the one hand and President Putin on the other. The history between the two men dated back to their (only) meeting in 1998, at a time when Mr Putin was the newly appointed head of the FSB and Mr Berezovsky and Mr Litvinenko still hoped that he might implement a programme of reform. In the years that followed, Mr Litvinenko made repeated highly personal attacks on President Putin, culminating in the allegation of paedophilia in July 2006.
¶9.125 These themes overlap. Many of them are reflected in Professor Service's observation
228that President Putin, "almost certainly looked on what Litvinenko did after fleeing abroad as punishable treachery".45 I am satisfied that, in general terms, members of the Putin administration, including the President himself and the FSB, had motives for taking action against Mr Litvinenko, including killing him, in late 2006.
¶The Litvinenko Inquiry
¶9.126 In his closing statement Mr Emmerson submitted that a causative link could be
established between the damning due diligence report on Mr Ivanov that Mr Litvinenko had given to Mr Lugovoy, and his subsequent poisoning. He made a similar submission in relation to the investigation that, to Mr Lugovoy's knowledge, Mr Litvinenko was conducting in relation to Mr Gordeyev.
¶9.127 As I indicated in chapter 4 of Part 5 above, where I have set out the evidence relating
to the Ivanov issue, there is a difficulty with the argument that Mr Lugovoy was tasked to kill Mr Litvinenko as a result of him taking the Ivanov report back to Moscow. The difficulty is in the timing. The evidence is that Mr Litvinenko gave the Ivanov report to Mr Lugovoy in late September 2006. That was only a matter of weeks before what I have found was the first attempt to poison Mr Litvinenko on 16 October 2006, and only a matter of days before arrangements were made for Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun to make that first joint trip to London (starting with Mr Kovtun's visa application on 2 October). It was also some considerable time after Mr Lugovoy began to court Mr Litvinenko, a process that had started with Mr Lugovoy's call to Mr Litvinenko in late 2004 and that continued in earnest with their first meeting in London in late 2005.
¶9.128 In summary, it appears from the evidence that the operation conducted by Mr Lugovoy
against Mr Litvinenko was already underway before the investigation into Mr Gordeyev began, or the Ivanov report was drafted. I do not therefore think that either of these matters was a fundamental cause of the decision to kill Mr Litvinenko. That said, and although the timing with regard to the Ivanov report is tight, it is possible that one or other (or both) of these considerations may have provided extra motivation and impetus to a plan that had already been conceived.
¶The evidence of similar deaths and killings 9.129 At the beginning of a section of his first report entitled Political killings, 1999-2005,
Professor Service stated that, "there have been several killings of prominent critics of Putin and his administration".46 In the same paragraph Professor Service noted that: "the evidence suggesting official complicity in these crimes is of a circumstantial nature, and the authors who have specialised in ferreting out the evidence are themselves well-known as critics who agree with the charges that the murdered critics levelled at the Russian authorities." Professor Service concluded that a number of these commentators, including Mr Goldfarb and Mr Felshtinsky (who, of course, both gave evidence to me), were nonetheless reliable in their factual assertions. He then went on to list the details of a number of killings.
¶9.130 During the course of the Inquiry hearings, I heard evidence about the deaths of a
considerable number of President Putin's opponents that took place in the years prior to Mr Litvinenko's death. In the case of some, there had obviously been a murder, and the only question was who had sponsored it. Other cases were more complicated in that there was a preliminary question as to whether the deceased had been murdered or died of natural causes, and a secondary question as to who was responsible for the murder if that was indeed what had taken place.
¶9.131 Anna Politkovskaya was undoubtedly murdered. She was shot dead in Moscow on
2297 October 2006. As I have set out above in Part 5, chapter 6, she was a prominent journalist and campaigner against President Putin. She and Mr Litvinenko were friends and fellow campaigners for Chechen causes. Professor Service recorded that "most
¶Part 9 | Chapters 1 to 12 | Who directed the killing?
observers" believed Ms Politkovskaya's death to have been "a political assassination", with suspicion falling on either President Putin or President Kadyrov of Chechnya.47
¶9.132 Sergei Yushenkov was shot dead in a street in Moscow in April 2003. He was a
member of the Russian Parliament who had been one of the co-founders of the oppositionist Liberal Russia party with Boris Berezovsky in 2002. He was also a prominent member of the commission that had been established to investigate the 1999 apartment bombings.48 Marina Litvinenko recalled that Mr Yushenkov had met Mr Litvinenko in London in 2002 or 2003.49
¶9.133 Another of the founders of the Liberal Russia party was Vladimir Golovlev. He was
shot and killed in Moscow in 2002. Mr Goldfarb said that his death, "appear[ed] to have been a political assassination".50
¶9.134 Professor Service noted that, "extrajudicial killings outside the frontiers of the Russian
¶Federation have sometimes been attributed to Russian security forces."51 INQ017734 (page 10 paragraph 33) Goldfarb 5/125; 26/21-22 Shvets 24/102 INQ017809 (page 58) INQ019146 (page 19 paragraph 61)
¶9.135 The best known example of political assassination conducted by Russia outside its
borders during this period is the February 2004 killing of the Chechen Vice President Zelinkhan Yandarbiev. He was blown up as he left a mosque with his son. Professor Service stated that Mr Yandarbiev was "a strong critic of the Putin administration",52 who had been a leader of the Chechen insurgency until going abroad in 1999. He said that, prior to his death, Mr Yandarbiev had been conducting his anti-Moscow activities in Qatar, where he was free from the risk of extradition to Russia, and that he had been held responsible by the Russian authorities for the Moscow theatre siege in October 2002. As to Russia's responsibility for Mr Yandarbiev's death, Professor Service stated:53
"Three agents of Russian military intelligence were arrested in Doha and accused of planting the bomb that killed Yandarbiev. Igor Ivanov, Secretary of the Security Council, was sent to put pressure on the Qatari administration. Two Qatari citizens were taken into custody at Moscow's Sheremetevo airport; they were said to be suspected of connections with the Chechen insurgents. Putin wished to secure the release of the Russian agents. He phoned the Emir himself about the matter. One of the agents was allowed back to Russia. Two remained in custody until December 2004, when they were flown to Moscow to serve out their sentences in Russian prisons. The Qatari detainees were liberated as part of the diplomatic bargain."
¶9.136 A few months after Mr Yandarbiev's death, in September 2004, there was an apparent
attempt to poison Viktor Yuschenko, the anti-Moscow candidate in Presidential elections taking place in Ukraine. Professor Service recorded that Mr Yuschenko's poisoning was attributed to Russian security forces.54
¶9.137 Nor was this the only incident during this period of the suspected poisoning of opponents of President Putin by Russian agents.
230¶The Litvinenko Inquiry
¶9.138 In 2003, Russian politician Yuri Shchekochikhin died of apparent poisoning. Professor
¶Service described Mr Shchekochikhin's career in the following terms:55
"Yuri Shchekochikhin was deputy editor of Novoya Gazeta and a campaigning columnist over many years. Elected as a Duma deputy in 1995, he was active in the struggle against corruption, against abuses in the armed forces and against the wars in Chechnya. He denounced the official story about the Moscow apartment bombings in September 1999. He frequently exposed malpractices by FSB officers."
Mr Goldfarb said that Mr Shchekochikhin did not lose his hair as he died but that his symptoms had resembled those of Mr Yuschenko. He thought that Mr Shchekochikhin had been poisoned with dioxins, rather than with a radioactive substance. He added, "Everyone believed that he was poisoned... his family and his party, colleagues, always claimed that he was poisoned."56 INQ017734 (pages 10-11 paragraphs 36,39-40) Goldfarb 26/50 INQ015674 Mascall 9/96-97 Goldfarb 26/26
¶9.139 Ms Politkovskaya had nearly died from poisoning in 2004, two years before she was
murdered, when travelling to Grozny. Professor Service commented; "The identity of the culprit was never discovered, but there was speculation that Kadyrov was exasperated by her exposures of the human rights abuses in his republic."57 Marina Litvinenko 3/87 lines 16-18 Marina Litvinenko 3/135-136 Shvets 24/82-84 Krgo 9/57 INQ019146 (page 23 paragraph 73)
¶9.140 In 2004, an Islamist guerrilla leader named Ibn Khattab was killed by a poisoned letter. Mr Goldfarb said that the FSB had claimed responsibility for this killing.58
¶9.141 In the same year, the Russian public figure Roman Tsepov died in mysterious
circumstances. Professor Service stated that Mr Tsepov: "was reliably said to have liaised between politicians and organised crime in St Petersburg and to have been close to Putin during his career in the city".59 Mr Goldfarb described how it had been alleged that Mr Tsepov had died from radioactive poisoning, and that many of his symptoms – such as loss of hair and destruction of the immune system – had been similar to those suffered by Mr Litvinenko.60
¶9.142 In the course of his oral evidence to me, Professor Dombey repeated an observation
that he had previously made in an article in the London Review of Books.61 He said that, on the hypothesis that Mr Litvinenko had been deliberately poisoned with polonium 210 in a killing sponsored by the Russian State, it was reasonable to assume that the poison would have been tested on others in advance. Professor Dombey identified two cases that might indicate such testing. One was the case of Mr Tsepov, to which I have already referred. The other was the case of a Chechen man named Lecha Islamov. In the article to which I have referred, Professor Dombey had this to say about the Islamov case:62
231"In April 2004, it was reported that Lecha Islamov, a Chechen guerrilla commander serving a nine-year prison sentence, had died after being admitted to hospital in Volgograd with a mysterious illness. 'Sources close to the convict,' ran a report in the Chechnya Weekly, '... suspect he may have been poisoned by Russia's
¶Part 9 | Chapters 1 to 12 | Who directed the killing?
security agencies ... Islamov's symptoms – including hair loss and massive blisters – were said to be inexplicable to the doctors who have been trying to treat him.' Islamov's relatives said that he'd told them his jailers had summoned him several days before his death for an 'informal conversation', during which he was given a snack and some tea. 'He began to feel ill within five minutes,' they said, 'as he was being taken back to his cell'."
¶9.143 Mr Zakayev gave a very similar account of Mr Islamov's death when he gave oral
evidence to the Inquiry. He told me that Mr Islamov had been a prisoner in Lefortovo prison, the FSB prison in Moscow, and that Mr Islamov had been convinced that he had been poisoned by a cup of tea given to him by prison staff 12 days before he died.63
¶9.144 What do these cases show that may be of relevance to the circumstances of
¶Mr Litvinenko's death?
¶9.145 A note of caution should be sounded at the outset. As Professor Service observed,
the evidence of Russian State involvement in most of these deaths is circumstantial. And even to the extent that Russian State involvement in any of these deaths is established, it plainly does not follow from involvement in those deaths that the Russian State was complicit in Mr Litvinenko's death.
¶9.146 All that said, these cases appear to establish a pattern of events, which is of contextual
importance to the circumstances of Mr Litvinenko's death. These cases suggest that in the years prior to Mr Litvinenko's death, the Russian State may have been involved in the assassination of Mr Putin's critics; they suggest that those who were seeking to uncover the truth about the 1999 apartment bombings may have been targeted, and that living overseas may not have provided complete protection. Lastly, these cases suggest that the Russian State may have sponsored attacks against its opponents using poisons, including radioactive poisons.
¶9.147 I should make it clear that I have deliberately focused for these purposes on events
in the few years immediately preceding November 2006, since those events have the strongest temporal relationship with Mr Litvinenko's death. There have of course been other deaths since that of Mr Litvinenko, including the deaths in the UK of Mr Berezovsky and Mr Perepilichny and the shooting in Moscow of Boris Nemtsov, but for reasons of relevance and proportionality I did not hear detailed evidence about deaths and/or killings of Mr Putin's opponents that took place after 2006.
¶9.148 That said, there is one event that took place in the summer of 2007 that I regard as
being of potential significance to the circumstances of Mr Litvinenko's death some months earlier.
¶9.149 I heard evidence from Mr Goldfarb64 and from Mr Zakayev65 that in June 2007 a
232Chechen named Movladi Atlangeriev came to the UK. Mr Goldfarb explained that Mr Atlangeriev had "a long association with the FSB" and that the Metropolitan Police Service possessed intelligence that he had come to the UK to assassinate Mr Berezovsky. He did indeed attempt to meet Mr Berezovsky, but was arrested and deported. It would appear that shortly after his return to Moscow, Mr Atlangeriev was kidnapped and killed, possibly by a rival Chechen faction. If the intelligence that the
¶The Litvinenko Inquiry
police are said to have received about Mr Atlangeriev was true, this event is evidence that at very much the time of Mr Litvinenko's death, the FSB was prepared to arrange the assassination of leading opponents of the Putin regime in London.
¶9.150 It is also convenient at this point to return briefly to the information that Mr Scaramella
received from Mr Limarev in October 2006, about which he wished to warn Mr Litvinenko when they met at itsu on 1 November 2006. I have previously referred to this matter at paragraph 6.287 above.
¶9.151 Mr Scaramella stated that he received a series of warnings from Mr Limarev in late
- He believed that the information Mr Limarev passed to him came from sources in Russia, including serving intelligence officers. He said that at some stage prior to the murder of Ms Politkovskaya (which took place on 7 October 2006), Mr Limarev had told him about a list of "enemies" of Russia who were to be "eliminated". Mr Scaramella said that the list had included Mr Berezovsky, Ms Politkovskaya, Mr Litvinenko, himself, Mr Guzzanti, Mr Gordievsky, Mr Zakayev and "probably even Bukovsky".66 Mr Scaramella said that he had spoken to Mr Limarev either on the day of Ms Politkovskaya's death or the day after that. Mr Limarev had told him that the killing of the "targets" on the list had started. Mr Limarev had also warned him that other individuals on the list might be poisoned with radioactive thallium, rather than being shot.67
¶9.152 I have referred above to the emails that Mr Scaramella received from Mr Limarev
shortly before his meeting with Mr Litvinenko on 1 November 2006, and which he printed off and showed to Mr Litvinenko when they were at the itsu restaurant on that day. The emails that Mr Scaramella received from Mr Limarev focused on a report of action being planned against Mr Scaramella and Mr Guzzanti by a group of Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) veterans known as Dignity and Honor. There was, though, some mention of a risk to Mr Litvinenko – the earlier of the two emails stated:68
"Meanwhile above mentioned Russian intelligence officers speak more and more about necessity to use force against PG [Guzzanti] and MS [Scaramella], considering their 'incessant anti-Russian activities' – as well as against Berezovsky and Litvinenko."
¶9.153 I have also observed that Mr Litvinenko did not place any weight on Mr Limarev's
warnings when they were conveyed to him by Mr Scaramella. It is clear, however, that Mr Scaramella took what Mr Limarev had told him very seriously. He produced a message that he had written on a piece of paper either on 1 November 2006 or the day after, and kept on his person for the rest of the time that he was in London. He may already have had it with him when he met Mr Litvinenko at itsu. The message listed contact numbers and then stated, "Please contact also the police and security services because I am in danger for my work at the Italian Parliament (Senator Paolo Guzzanti). There are risks that I have been poisoned."69 Felshtinsky 23/145 INQ017684 Marina Litvinenko 4/38-42 INQ017922 (page 3) Scaramella 15/139-140
¶9.154 I am obviously not in a position to make any findings as to the precise source (or
233sources) of the information that Mr Limarev was receiving during this period, and which was then passed on first by Mr Limarev to Mr Scaramella and then by Mr Scaramella to others, including Mr Litvinenko. Nor am I able to make any firm findings as to
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whether there was a link between the information that Mr Limarev was receiving and any plans that were in fact being made at the time to murder Ms Politkovskaya and Mr Litvinenko – or indeed any others on the hit list.
¶9.155 What can be said, though, is that the warnings that Mr Limarev passed on to
234Mr Scaramella and, through him, to Mr Litvinenko, were entirely consistent with the points that can be drawn from the run of the cases that are described above. Leading opponents of President Putin, including those living outside Russia, were at risk of assassination. One of the risks they faced was that of being poisoned.
¶The Litvinenko Inquiry