I am just a little shocked, because as such an outspoken critic of the Kremlin, it seems ridiculous he would just submit to drinking the tea if he knew it was contaminated. I feel like there must have been some pressure there or some other part of the story we clearly don't know about.......
please, Condi, do tell what really happened!
yours,
sarachka
Tea Poison Killed Former Spy, Waiter Says
LONDON (July 15) - The poison that killed former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko was sprayed into his tea, a waiter who served the man's table at a hotel bar said in an interview published in a British newspaper on Sunday.The witness account in The Sunday Telegraph is the first to be made public, and provides new details on how the poison, a highly radioactive substance called polonium-210, might have been delivered.
Norberto Andrade, the head barman at London's Millennium Hotel, said he believes he was deliberately distracted as he tried to serve a gin and tonic to the table where Litvinenko was sitting with Andrei Lugovoi, a Russian businessman and former KGB agent, and two other Russians, Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, on Nov. 1, 2006.
Though he did not see it happen, Andrade told the Telegraph he believes that at that moment the poison was sprayed into a pot of green tea on the table. He said investigators later told him that traces of the poison were found all over the table and floor and on a picture above where Litvinenko was sitting, leading him to conclude that the poison must have been sprayed.
"When I was delivering the gin and tonic to the table, I was obstructed," the paper quoted him as saying. "I couldn't see what was happening, but it seemed very deliberate to create a distraction. It made it difficult to put the drink down.
"It was the only moment when the situation seemed unfriendly and something went on at that point. I think the polonium was sprayed into the teapot. There was contamination found on the picture above where Mr. Litvinenko had been sitting and all over the table, chair and floor, so it must have been a spray."
The barman said that after the men had left he cleared the table and noticed the tea had turned an unusual color.
"When I poured the remains of the teapot into the sink, the tea looked more yellow than usual and was thicker - it looked gooey," Andrade said.
Litvinenko, who had become an outspoken Kremlin critic, later fell ill and was taken to a London hospital. He died Nov. 23, and in a deathbed statement accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being behind his killing - a claim that Russia has denied.
Britain has sought to extradite Lugovoi to stand trial in the killing, but Russia last week formally refused to transfer him. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Tuesday that Britain was considering ways to respond.
Alexander Goldfarb, who was a friend of Litvinenko's, said the waiter's account provides "extremely significant" evidence.
"This sort of detail, how he served them, how the tea changed color, is clearly very serious evidence," Goldfarb said.
Goldfarb, who is co-authoring a book on the death of Litvinenko, said that investigators have asked witnesses not to talk to the press, and he speculated that the barman would not have done so without permission.
"Up until now they asked all of us not to say anything publicly which might be constituted as evidence at the trial. Possibly, they have decided that they're not going to get Mr. Lugovoi and have him stand trial."
