posted December 24, 2006 07:10 PM              

ROME, Italy (CNN) -- An Italian man who met with former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko the day Litvinenko was poisoned was arrested Sunday on other charges, police said.

Mario Scaramella was arrested at Naples airport as he arrived on a flight from London, where he was hospitalized earlier this month and treated for suspected radiation poisoning, police said.

Scaramella was arrested in connection with an investigation by a Rome prosecutor looking into allegations Scaramella was involved in arms trafficking and violating secrets from an investigative file, the police spokesman said. (Watch CNN's Matthew Chance describe Scaramella's involvement in shady dealings Video)

Scaramella was one of the last people to meet with Litvinenko, who died last month of radiation poisoning.

In an interview with CNN's Matthew Chance in London earlier this month, Scaramella talked about his November 1 meeting with Litvinenko.

"We met in Piccadilly Circus, and I followed him up to a restaurant... and we discussed about some papers," Scaramella said.

Scaramella said he told Litvinenko that both of their names were on a "hit list" Scaramella had discovered. Speaking with Chance from his hospital bed, Scaramella said neither he nor Litvinenko gave the list much credence at the time. Litvinenko died November 23 of radiation poisoning, London police said.

Scaramella has a history of involvement with spy operations, including having worked for Italian intelligence during an investigation of Russian spy operations in Europe.

On his deathbed, Litvinenko blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for involvement in his poisoning -- an allegation that the Kremlin denied.

Scaramella also was hospitalized for several days in Britain for exposure to polonium-210.

The same day that Litvinenko met with Scaramella, the Russian met with Andrei Lugovoi, also an ex-Soviet agent; Dmitry Kovtun, a Russian businessman; and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, head of a private Russian security firm, in the bar at London's Millennium Hotel.

All three men have denied involvement in the ex-spy's death.

Scaramella has been gathering information for Italian Sen. Paolo Guzzanti -- the former chair of a parliamentary commission that examined cases of past KGB infiltration in Italy, The Associated Press reported.

CNN's Hada Messia in Rome contributed to this report

Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

* Tools:
* Save |
* Print |
* E-mail |
* Most Popular

posted December 25, 2006 10:37 PM              

check these out: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6180432.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2469142,00.html

quote:

---

Alexander Litvinenko, a former colonel in the Russian secret service and a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, was seriously ill under armed guard at a London hospital last night.

Mr Litvinenko, 50, who used to work for the Federal Security Bureau (FSB, the former KGB), fell ill after meeting a contact at Itsu, a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly. The woman journalist claimed to have information on the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, 48, the outspoken journalist who was killed at her Moscow apartment last month.

A close friend of Mr Litvinenko said last night: "Alexander has no doubt that he was poisoned at the instigation of the Russian government." He has been living at a secret address in London with his wife and son because he feared he might be targeted by political opponents.

---

posted December 25, 2006 10:45 PM              

Putin tried to kill my friend, claims Russian billionaire
By Andrew Alderson, Olga Craig, Chris Hastings and James Glover, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:43am GMT 19/11/2006

Friends of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian defector, told The Sunday Telegraph last night of their horror at seeing him in hospital after he was poisoned.

Boris Berezovsky

Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian billionaire who has known Mr Litvinenko for 10 years, accused President Vladimir Putin of being behind the attack.

Mr Berezovsky, who visited his friend in hospital on Friday, said: "I couldn't believe it because he looked 10 years older than the last time I saw him and that was only a couple of weeks ago. He has lost all his hair and is completely bald."

Mr Berezovsky has no doubts that his friend was targeted by agents on behalf of Mr Putin.

"I know people in Britain find it difficult to believe that someone who is a leader of a G8 country and someone who struts across the world stage as a democrat could order something like this to be done," he said. "But people need to understand he is a bandit."

advertisementScotland Yard is investigating how Mr Litvinenko, a former colonel in the Russian secret service and a fierce critic of Mr Putin, was poisoned. The 50-year-old, who used to work for the Federal Security Bureau (FSB, the former KGB), is feared to be the latest victim of the Russian government.

Mr Litvinenko is believed to have been targeted when he met a female journalist at Itsu, a Japanese restaurant in Piccadilly, London. She claimed to have information on the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, 48, the outspoken journalist who was shot dead at her Moscow apartment last month. Mr Litvinenko is thought to have been poisoned with thallium, a colourless and odourless liquid that is used to kill rats.

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that he was examined in hospital by Professor John Henry, a British toxicologist who two years ago was one of the first to confirm that Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian president, had been poisoned during the election campaign. After being poisoned, Mr Yushchenko's face blistered violently.

Mr Litvinenko, who defected six years ago and became a British citizen last month, fell ill soon after meeting his contact on November 1 and has been transferred from one London hospital to another.

His friends believe the woman he met may have been a genuine contact. However, they suspect opponents discovered the venue for their meeting and slipped the poison into his food or drink before or during his meal.

A friend said: "Alexander cannot be certain he was poisoned in the restaurant but that is the most likely scenario." There is no suggestion that Itsu or its staff are involved.

The poisoning of Mr Litvinenko has echoes of the killing of Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian defector, who was poisoned by a pellet inserted into his leg from the tip of an umbrella in London in 1978.

A respected source in Moscow said: "The Russian government consider Litvinenko to be an enemy and a traitor. He is a critic of the president and has questioned whether the Chechens were really behind the Moscow apartment bombings of 1999 which killed 300 people." The bombings were blamed on Chechen rebels, prompting Mr Putin to order an assault on the Chechen capital, Grozny, which left thousands dead.

Mr Litvinenko came to prominence at a press conference in Moscow in 1998. Flanked by colleagues who concealed their identities with balaclavas, he claimed that the KGB had been ordered to assassinate Mr Berezovsky, who had helped in Mr Putin's rise to power.

In 2002, during his absence, Mr Litvinenko was convicted of abuse of office and given a suspended sentence of three and a half years.

Russians who speak out against Mr Putin's administration – especially journalists – fear for their lives. When Ms Politkovskaya was gunned down in the lift of her apartment block in Moscow last month, she was the 13th journalist to be murdered. She ran a relentless campaign exposing corruption in the army and its brutal reign in Chechnya.

Since her assassination, the Committee to Protect Journalists has disclosed that Russia has become the third most dangerous place in the world to work: only in Iraq and Algeria have more reporters been murdered. What is perhaps more chilling is that not one of the 13 murders of journalists has been solved.

When Mr Putin came to power he declared: "Our press is free and forever will be." The honeymoon did not last. Instead of following a path to democracy, Mr Putin, a former head of the KGB, has reasserted the centralised Kremlin control of the Soviet era.