On deathbed, spy blames Putin

So far, the case has been labeled an 'unexplained death.'
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
LONDON -- In a chilling accusation dictated and signed just hours before he lapsed into a coma and died, a former KGB agent fingered Russian President Vladimir Putin as the man ultimately responsible for his death after a suspected poisoning shrouded in mystery.
Putin denied the allegation as medical experts and criminal investigators tried to unravel a case that has perplexed them for three weeks.
British officials announced Friday that a "major dose" of polonium-210, a hard-to-detect radioactive substance, had been found in the urine of the former agent, Alexander Litvinenko. Scotland Yard said it also had found traces of the substance in Litvinenko's London home, at a sushi bar where he ate with a colleague and at a hotel where he met two Russian men on the day he fell ill.
Standing before a cluster of cameras and reporters Friday outside London's University College Hospital where Litvinenko, 43, was pronounced dead Thursday evening, his close friend Alexander Goldfarb read the former spy's final statement:
"You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women.
"You may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world, Mr. Putin, will reverberate in your ears for the rest of your life."
The Russian government has strongly denied any involvement in what Scotland Yard is officially treating as an "unexplained death."
Speaking to reporters Friday in Helsinki, where he was attending a Russian-European Union summit, Putin called Litvinenko's death a "tragedy" but asserted that until now, there has been no proof of foul play. He also expressed doubts about Litvinenko's posthumous statement.
"If such a note really appeared before Mr. Litvinenko's death, the question arises why it had not been published earlier when he was still alive," Putin said. "And if it appeared after his death, what comments can there be?
"The people who did it are not God almighty," Putin continued, "and Mr. Litvinenko, alas, is not Lazarus. And it's a great pity that even such tragic things as human death are used for political provocations."
In a meeting at the British Foreign Office, British diplomats asked the Russian ambassador to help in the investigation. Putin said the Russian government would do so.
Findings
Pat Troop, head of Britain's Health Protection Agency, said that the high levels of the substance found in Litvinenko's urine indicated that he "would either have to have eaten it, inhaled it or taken it in through a wound." Officials were debating whether it was safe to perform an autopsy, Troop said.
The former spy's father, Walter Litvinenko, a medical doctor, was at his son's side at the time of death and later spoke to reporters outside the hospital.
"It was an excruciating death, and he took it like a real man," said the elder Litvinenko, tears flowing. "He never lost his human dignity."
Goldfarb said that what angered the Kremlin most about Litvinenko is a book he published in 2002, "Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within," which said that Russian intelligence agents had engineered a series of apartment-building bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities that were blamed on Chechen rebels. Russian authorities have vehemently denied the allegation.