KavkazCenter - FSB Denies Attempting To Kill Russian Defector in London

FSB Denies Attempting To Kill Russian Defector in London

The Moscow newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets ("Moscow Young Communist League Member") denied in its Monday issue that the Russian secret police FSB attempted to kill a Russian defector, Alexander Litvinenko, in London on November 1, 2006.

Moskovsky Komsomolets is said to have most close ties with the FSB among the Russian media.

Citing a report on the poisoning of Mr Litvinenko from the English-language service (sic!) of the Kavkaz Center news agency in a Russian translation made in Moscow, the newspaper confirmed that Mario Scaramella, an Italian citizen and a close associate of Kolmogorov, the deputy chief of the FSB, visited several times the FSB headquarters in Moscow but said that his visits were purely professional and were connected with his position as a consultant of an Italian parliamentary commission investigating the KGB activity and the former KGB agents among Italian citizens in Italy.

These allegations by the Moscow newspaper seem really strange because the FSB (former KGB) never confirms or denies the names of the KGB agents in the West, and Mario Scaramella had nothing to look for in this matter in the FSB building at all, especially for several (!) times.

According to the intelligence, Mario Scaramella is a close friend and a business partner of Kolmogorov, the Chechen news agency Chechenpress reported on Saturday.

The Moscow newspaper also claimed that Mr Litvinenko had lied about his poisoning in order to gain publicity. This claim had been rejected by the doctors in a London hospital who confirmed that Mr Litvinenko had been really poisoned with an unknown toxin.

The KGB-FSB always denies point blank all its crimes. The most famous case is the murder of the main Stalin's rival, Leon Trotsky , who was assasinated by a Russian secret police agent in Mexico in 1940. The Russians denied that they had killed Mr Trotsky for almost 50 years and admitted this crime only during the perestroika era.