[Reader-list] more on 'Litvinenko case'

[Irina Aristarkhova]

 From Irina Aristarkhova:

Here is a new development in the death investigation of Sasha 
Litvinenko, a former KGB agent. Julia Svetlichnaja, a PhD candidate 
at Westminster University, claims she had known Litvinenko for months 
before his death, and he always behaved in a strange 'movie-like' 
way. It is interesting that Svetlichnaja, as her university web-page 
says (http://www.wmin.ac.uk/sshl/page-1203-smhp=1), is writing a PhD 
on the impact of Deleuze on art, under the supervision of Chantal 
Mouffe, within the Centre for the Study of Democracy, and her thesis 
title for now is 'Art of Empire?'. One wonders what it had to do with 
Litvinenko? She wanted (through him) to meet with Akhmed Zakayev, a 
Chechen government leader in exile, who lives in London. Below is her 
article from the Observer, which also published three new photos of 
Litvinenko. In another article she claims that Litvinenko wanted to 
blackmail other spies and rich Russians for money:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1962759,00.html.
You can imagine that this story is particularly loved in Russia, and 
not very well picked up in the West.


Strange stroll around Hyde Park that went nowhere


Julia Svetlichnaja recalls Litvinenko's eccentric behaviour

Sunday December 3, 2006
The Observer
At http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1962762,00.html


We first met beside the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus. Wearing 
dark glasses and leather jacket, Alexander Litvinenko appeared 
unexpectedly behind my back, saying: 'I was watching you from around 
the corner. You are not a spy, are you?' I suggested coffee in the 
nearby Caffe Nero, the first of our often chaotic, erratic 
conversations we would share from last April until his death.

I asked various questions about the Chechen people in Moscow during 
the Eighties and Nineties. Litvinenko, though, leapt from one exotic 
story to another - secret operations in Afghanistan, a plot against 
Boris Yeltsin, the assassination of former Chechen leader Dzhokhar 
Dudayev; all these memories still seemed dear to his heart. In the 
end I made my excuses and left.

'Try him, but filter what he says; the man rambles too much,' the 
exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky had earlier warned me. 
Litvinenko was the contact who, I had hoped, would introduce me to 
Akhmed Zakayev, a member of the officially unrecognised Chechen 
government in exile.

Ultimately, however, I almost regretted giving my email to 
Litvinenko. From our first meeting he started to feed me information 
with such gusto that in the weeks before his death I had started 
deleting most of his messages without opening them.

The next time we met, in the summer, we ended up walking around Hyde 
Park for hours. I started to wonder whether meeting Litvinenko was a 
waste of time. He told me shamelessly of his blackmailing plans aimed 
at Russian oligarchs. 'They have got enough, why not to share? I will 
do it officially,' he said. After two hours of traipsing around the 
park, I suggested we sit down somewhere. 'Professionals never sit and 
talk, they walk and walk around so nobody can overhear their 
conversation,' he muttered darkly.

So we carried on walking, Litvinenko regaling me with more stories 
about his war against the Kremlin. 'Every time I publish something on 
the Chechen press website, I piss them off. One day they will 
understand who I am!' he said.

Some of his emails were confidential documents from the FSB, the 
successor to the KGB; others were his own writings for the Chechen 
press. Many of his 'political' texts were too obviously rants to take 
seriously: one of his wildest claims was that Putin was a paedophile.

The photographs he sent were equally contradictory - one showed him 
with Zakayev and Anna Politkovskaya. Next he sent me a striking 
picture of himself in front of a large Union flag, holding a Chechen 
sword and wearing FSB gauntlets - Litvinenko said this proclaimed his 
pride in his new British citizenship.

The next meeting, in May, was arranged to take place at Litvinenko's 
home in Muswell Hill, north London, where we were supposed to be 
joined by Zakayev, but he did not turn up.

Litvinenko proudly told me how well his son was adapting to England 
and its language while he could barely string a few sentences 
together. Marina, his wife, served us dinner and tea with traditional 
Russian sweets. Afterwards, we moved to the garden and eventually to 
Litvinenko's study, where he showed me his stash of secret files and 
photographs. It was very late when he drove me to the station. He 
stopped at the traffic lights and, indicating right, suddenly turned 
left into a dark alley. We drove round and round the crescent before 
stopping.

'Demonstration. I was famous for getting rid of the "tail". All you 
have to do is to indicate and then turn the other way,' he explained.

We sat in his car for another hour talking about life in the FSB. I 
felt sorry for him. People around him seemed either deranged or were 
using him for their advantage.

Despite his whistleblower past, Litvinenko was confident he was safe. 
Unlike Zakayev, he willingly gave out his mobile phone number and 
home address. He did not have any security. Although, in October 
2004, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into Zakayev and Litvinenko's 
neighbouring homes in Muswell Hill, he never contemplated moving 
house.

May was the last time I saw him. Later I heard he had been poisoned 
and I am ashamed to say I thought it might have been another trick to 
get attention. After that I watched and read the details of his slow 
death drip into the media as the polonium 210 rotted him from within.

Would Litvinenko be pleased with the paradox that since his death he 
has been taken very seriously?
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