The Litvinenko Inquiry

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 Goldfarb 64 and from Mr Zakayev 65 that in June 2007 a
Chechen 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
63
Zakayev 26/162-163
64
Goldfarb 26/118-121
65
Zakeyev 26/163-167
231