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Russian ex-spy dies in London

The 43-year-old, a fierce critic of the Kremlin, said he was poisoned during an inquiry.

LONDON - A former Russian spy who said he had been poisoned died Thursday night at a London hospital, following a mysterious and rapid decline that left doctors unable to pinpoint the cause of death, officials said.

Alexander Litvinenko, a fierce critic of the Russian government, had suffered heart failure and was heavily sedated as medical staff struggled to determine what had made the 43-year-old critically ill.

"The matter is being investigated as an unexplained death," London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

The former spy said he believed he had been poisoned on Nov. 1, while investigating the slaying of another Kremlin detractor, investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. His hair fell out, his throat became swollen and his immune and nervous systems were severely damaged, he said.

Just hours before he lost consciousness, Litvinenko said in an interview with the Times newspaper of London that he had been silenced.

"I want to survive, just to show them," he said in the interview published in today's edition of the paper, copies of which were available late Thursday. They "got me, but they won't get everybody."

Doctors at London's University College Hospital said tests had virtually ruled out poisoning by thallium and radiation, toxins once considered possible culprits.

"The medical team at the hospital did everything possible to save his life," hospital spokesman Jim Down said, confirming the Russian's death Thursday night.

Antiterrorist police were investigating the poisoning, which friends and dissidents allege was carried out at the behest of the Russian government. Litvinenko sought asylum in Britain in 2000 and has been a relentless critic of the Kremlin and the Russian security services ever since.

On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, issued its strongest denial yet that it was involved in any assassination attempt.

"Litvinenko is not the kind of person for whose sake we would spoil bilateral relations," SVR spokesman Sergei Ivanov said, according to the Interfax news agency. "It is absolutely not in our interests to be engaged in such activity."

Litvinenko worked both for the KGB and for a successor, the Federal Security Service. In 1998, he publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky - now exiled in Britain - and a year later spent nine months in jail on charges of abuse of office, of which he was later acquitted and which prompted his move to London.

Litvinenko refused to implicate any of the people he met on the day he said he believed he was poisoned.

[Last modified November 24, 2006, 01:10:54]