The Litvinenko Inquiry
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Part 9 | Chapters 1 to 12 | Who directed the killing?<br />
security agencies ... Islamov’s symptoms – including hair loss and massive blisters<br />
– were said to be inexplicable to the doctors who have been trying to treat him.’<br />
Islamov’s relatives said that he’d told them his jailers had summoned him several<br />
days before his death for an ‘informal conversation’, during which he was given a<br />
snack and some tea. ‘He began to feel ill within five minutes,’ they said, ‘as he was<br />
being taken back to his cell’.”<br />
9.143 Mr Zakayev gave a very similar account of Mr Islamov’s death when he gave oral<br />
evidence to the <strong>Inquiry</strong>. He told me that Mr Islamov had been a prisoner in Lefortovo<br />
prison, the FSB prison in Moscow, and that Mr Islamov had been convinced that he<br />
had been poisoned by a cup of tea given to him by prison staff 12 days before he<br />
died. 63<br />
9.144 What do these cases show that may be of relevance to the circumstances of<br />
Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>’s death?<br />
9.145 A note of caution should be sounded at the outset. As Professor Service observed,<br />
the evidence of Russian State involvement in most of these deaths is circumstantial.<br />
And even to the extent that Russian State involvement in any of these deaths is<br />
established, it plainly does not follow from involvement in those deaths that the<br />
Russian State was complicit in Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>’s death.<br />
9.146 All that said, these cases appear to establish a pattern of events, which is of contextual<br />
importance to the circumstances of Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>’s death. <strong>The</strong>se cases suggest that<br />
in the years prior to Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>’s death, the Russian State may have been involved<br />
in the assassination of Mr Putin’s critics; they suggest that those who were seeking to<br />
uncover the truth about the 1999 apartment bombings may have been targeted, and<br />
that living overseas may not have provided complete protection. Lastly, these cases<br />
suggest that the Russian State may have sponsored attacks against its opponents<br />
using poisons, including radioactive poisons.<br />
9.147 I should make it clear that I have deliberately focused for these purposes on events<br />
in the few years immediately preceding November 2006, since those events have<br />
the strongest temporal relationship with Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>’s death. <strong>The</strong>re have of course<br />
been other deaths since that of Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>, including the deaths in the UK of<br />
Mr Berezovsky and Mr Perepilichny and the shooting in Moscow of Boris Nemtsov,<br />
but for reasons of relevance and proportionality I did not hear detailed evidence about<br />
deaths and/or killings of Mr Putin’s opponents that took place after 2006.<br />
9.148 That said, there is one event that took place in the summer of 2007 that I regard as<br />
being of potential significance to the circumstances of Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>’s death some<br />
months earlier.<br />
9.149 I heard evidence from Mr Goldfarb 64 and from Mr Zakayev 65 that in June 2007 a<br />
Chechen named Movladi Atlangeriev came to the UK. Mr Goldfarb explained that<br />
Mr Atlangeriev had “a long association with the FSB” and that the Metropolitan<br />
Police Service possessed intelligence that he had come to the UK to assassinate<br />
Mr Berezovsky. He did indeed attempt to meet Mr Berezovsky, but was arrested and<br />
deported. It would appear that shortly after his return to Moscow, Mr Atlangeriev was<br />
kidnapped and killed, possibly by a rival Chechen faction. If the intelligence that the<br />
63<br />
Zakayev 26/162-163<br />
64<br />
Goldfarb 26/118-121<br />
65<br />
Zakeyev 26/163-167<br />
231