A FORMER Russian spy was fatally poisoned on the ‘direct orders’ of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the widow’s lawyer told a public inquiry yesterday.
Alexander Litvinenko died at a London hospital weeks before he was due to give evidence at a criminal trial in Spain in 2006.
Ben Emmerson QC told the hearing that Putin brought ‘nuclear terrorism to the streets’ of London in an act of ‘unspeakable barbarism’.
He claimed that Putin saw Litvinenko as such a traitor that Russian special forces used him for target practice.
“The death sentence on the man who fled Moscow to become a British citizen, could not have been passed without the personal knowledge and permission of Putin,” added Emmerson.
“Putin should be unmasked by this inquiry as nothing more or less than a common criminal dressed up as a head of state.”
Litvinenko had to be buried in a lead coffin because the level of radiation in his body was so high.
A known informant for MI6, Litvinenko published books linking Putin with the St Petersburg Tambov-Malyshev underworld gang in the 1990s.
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