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<DEFANGED_div>From Irina Aristarkhova:</DEFANGED_div>
<DEFANGED_div><br></DEFANGED_div>
<DEFANGED_div>Here is a new development in the death investigation of Sasha
Litvinenko, a former KGB agent. Julia Svetlichnaja, a PhD candidate at
Westminster University, claims she had known Litvinenko for months
before his death, and he always behaved in a strange 'movie-like' way.
It is interesting that Svetlichnaja, as her university web-page says
(http://www.wmin.ac.uk/sshl/page-1203-smhp=1), is writing a PhD on the
impact of Deleuze on art, under the supervision of<font
face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"> Chantal Mouffe</font>, within
the Centre for the Study of Democracy, and her thesis title for now is
'Art of Empire?'. One wonders what it had to do with Litvinenko? She
wanted (through him) to meet with Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen government
leader in exile, who lives in London. Below is her article from the
Observer, which also published three new photos of Litvinenko. In
another article she claims that Litvinenko wanted to blackmail other
spies and rich Russians for money:</DEFANGED_div>
<DEFANGED_div><font face="Lucida Grande"
color="#000000"
>http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1962759,00.html</font
>. </DEFANGED_div>
<DEFANGED_div>You can imagine that this story is particularly loved in Russia,
and not very well picked up in the West.</DEFANGED_div>
<DEFANGED_div><br></DEFANGED_div>
<DEFANGED_div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br>
Strange stroll around Hyde Park that went nowhere<br>
<br>
<br>
Julia Svetlichnaja recalls Litvinenko's eccentric behaviour<br>
<br>
Sunday December 3, 2006<br>
The Observer<br>
At
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1962762,00.html</font></div
>
<DEFANGED_div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br></font></DEFANGED_div>
<DEFANGED_div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br>
We first met beside the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus. Wearing
dark glasses and leather jacket, Alexander Litvinenko appeared
unexpectedly behind my back, saying: 'I was watching you from around
the corner. You are not a spy, are you?' I suggested coffee in the
nearby Caffe Nero, the first of our often chaotic, erratic
conversations we would share from last April until his
death.</font><br>
</DEFANGED_div>
<DEFANGED_div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000">I asked various
questions about the Chechen people in Moscow during the Eighties and
Nineties. Litvinenko, though, leapt from one exotic story to another -
secret operations in Afghanistan, a plot against Boris Yeltsin, the
assassination of former Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev; all these
memories still seemed dear to his heart. In the end I made my excuses
and left.</font><br>
</DEFANGED_div>
<DEFANGED_div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000">'Try him, but filter
what he says; the man rambles too much,' the exiled Russian oligarch
Boris Berezovsky had earlier warned me. Litvinenko was the contact
who, I had hoped, would introduce me to Akhmed Zakayev, a member of
the officially unrecognised Chechen government in exile.<br>
<br>
Ultimately, however, I almost regretted giving my email to Litvinenko.
>From our first meeting he started to feed me information with such
gusto that in the weeks before his death I had started deleting most
of his messages without opening them.<br>
<br>
The next time we met, in the summer, we ended up walking around Hyde
Park for hours. I started to wonder whether meeting Litvinenko was a
waste of time. He told me shamelessly of his blackmailing plans aimed
at Russian oligarchs. 'They have got enough, why not to share? I will
do it officially,' he said. After two hours of traipsing around the
park, I suggested we sit down somewhere. 'Professionals never sit and
talk, they walk and walk around so nobody can overhear their
conversation,' he muttered darkly.<br>
<br>
So we carried on walking, Litvinenko regaling me with more stories
about his war against the Kremlin. 'Every time I publish something on
the Chechen press website, I piss them off. One day they will
understand who I am!' he said.<br>
<br>
Some of his emails were confidential documents from the FSB, the
successor to the KGB; others were his own writings for the Chechen
press. Many of his 'political' texts were too obviously rants to take
seriously: one of his wildest claims was that Putin was a
paedophile.<br>
<br>
The photographs he sent were equally contradictory - one showed him
with Zakayev and Anna Politkovskaya. Next he sent me a striking
picture of himself in front of a large Union flag, holding a Chechen
sword and wearing FSB gauntlets - Litvinenko said this proclaimed his
pride in his new British citizenship.</font></DEFANGED_div>
<DEFANGED_div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br>
The next meeting, in May, was arranged to take place at Litvinenko's
home in Muswell Hill, north London, where we were supposed to be
joined by Zakayev, but he did not turn up.<br>
<br>
Litvinenko proudly told me how well his son was adapting to England
and its language while he could barely string a few sentences
together. Marina, his wife, served us dinner and tea with traditional
Russian sweets. Afterwards, we moved to the garden and eventually to
Litvinenko's study, where he showed me his stash of secret files and
photographs. It was very late when he drove me to the station. He
stopped at the traffic lights and, indicating right, suddenly turned
left into a dark alley. We drove round and round the crescent before
stopping.<br>
<br>
'Demonstration. I was famous for getting rid of the "tail".
All you have to do is to indicate and then turn the other way,' he
explained.<br>
<br>
We sat in his car for another hour talking about life in the FSB. I
felt sorry for him. People around him seemed either deranged or were
using him for their advantage.<br>
<br>
Despite his whistleblower past, Litvinenko was confident he was safe.
Unlike Zakayev, he willingly gave out his mobile phone number and home
address. He did not have any security. Although, in October 2004, a
Molotov cocktail was thrown into Zakayev and Litvinenko's neighbouring
homes in Muswell Hill, he never contemplated moving house.<br>
<br>
May was the last time I saw him. Later I heard he had been poisoned
and I am ashamed to say I thought it might have been another trick to
get attention. After that I watched and read the details of his slow
death drip into the media as the polonium 210 rotted him from
within.<br>
<br>
Would Litvinenko be pleased with the paradox that since his death he
has been taken very seriously?</font><br>
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