An Italian contact of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian defector killed by radioactive poisoning in London, confirmed in an interview that the Kremlin had ordered his death because he knew too much.
"Litvinenko didn't die from stomach pain," Professor Mario Scaramella, one of the last to see Litvinenko alive, told daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. "He was killed because of everything he knew.
"It can all be found now in the documents of the Mitrokhin commission," Prof Scaramella said, referring to an Italian parliamentary inquiry into agents recruited in Italy by the former Soviet secret service, the KGB.
Prof Scaramella, a professor at the University of Naples, was a consultant to the Mitrokhin commission, and Litvinenko, who left Russia six years ago and became a British citizen, had cooperated with the inquiry.
Asked by the paper if he wanted police protection, Prof Scaramella said: "I'm not asking for anything. But there is no doubt it was the Kremlin. And as I am the only one to have collected all his information...''.
He left the statement unfinished.
According to British media, Prof Scaramella met Litvinenko in a London sushi restaurant on November 1 and showed him emails indicating the FSB, the successor to the KGB, was considering using force against critics of President Vladimir Putin.
British paper The Guardian published today what it said were extracts from the emails.
"All SVR (Russian foreign intelligence service) officers are sure that PG (senator Paolo Guzzanti) and MS (Prof Scaramella) still live closely with 'enemy No.1 of Russia' - (self-exiled oligarch) Boris Berezovsky and his 'companion-in-arms' - first of all A. Litvinenko,'' one read.
"Russian intelligence officers speak more and more about necessity to use force against PG and MS, considering their 'incessant anti-Russian activities' - as well as against Berezovsky and Litvinenko.''
The Italian commission of inquiry into KGB spy recruitment was headed by Mr Guzzanti - named in the printed emails - and a senator from the conservative party of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
In an interview with the Italian daily, La Stampa, Mr Guzzanti said: "I have no doubt that the current Russian secret services ... are behind this murder and not only this one."
Mr Guzzanti alleged Litvinenko was their third victim.
"The first was general Anatoly Trofimov, former deputy chief of the FSB, who was killed in front of his house in 2005 because he was Litvinenko's superior,'' Mr Guzzanti said.
"The second was American journalist, who had strong ties to Alexander (Litvinenko) and who had denounced the involvement of Putin's secret services in the war in Chechnya,'' he added.
The Ameriacan, who exposed alleged abuses by Russian forces in Chechnya, was gunned down in an apparent contract killing at her apartment building in Moscow last month.
Senator Guzzanti, whose commission completed its inquiry without reaching any definite conclusions, said Litvinenko's cooperation with the probe "confirmed that the biggest community of Russian agents in the world lives and work in Italy".
"The Cold War has never ended,'' he added. "Today we are seeing a conflict between Russia and the West whose consequences are unpredictable." The Sunday Telegraph reported.
Dmitriy Orlov
KC
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