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Litvinenko 'poisoned at hotel'
11/12/2006 10:11 - (SA)
London - A bus ticket found in the coat pocket of ex Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko indicates he was poisoned in a central London hotel where he met with two associates, the Daily Mirror tabloid said on Monday.
Citing police sources, the newspaper said that the ticket was bought near Litvinenko's central London home on November 1, the day he fell ill, three weeks before he died.
He used the bus to travel in to central London where his meetings that day took place.
According to unnamed police sources cited by the Mirror, the bus he boarded has been checked and was not contaminated by the radioactive substance polonium-210, large quantities of which were found in Litvinenko's urine.
Because the hotel is the first known place he visited, the tabloid said, that indicates he was poisoned there, because high levels of polonium were detected there.
On November 1, Litvinenko met with Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun at the hotel, and also met with Italian academic Mario Scaramella at a sushi bar that day.
"This ticket helps us prove Litvinenko's death was not a suicide or an accident," an unidentified senior source within the Metropolitan Police's Counter-Terrorism Command told the newspaper.
"He entered central London from his home without a trace of polonium."
"If he had already received the dose, it would have shown up on his bus seat. But the bus tested negative."
- AFP
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