Gaidar Was Poisoned Before Ireland

Former Russian prime minister , being treated in a Russian hospital for a mystery illness after collapsing at a conference in Ireland last week, was ill before he arrived, a conference attendee said on Friday.“I was there when he was taken ill, or when his illness reached its peak basically,” said Seamus Martin, a former Moscow correspondent for The Irish Times newspaper, who was at the conference in Maynooth in Ireland last week.

“He had been complaining of being ill right from the very start of that morning but he collapsed at about half five in the evening,” Martin told Irish broadcaster RTE.

He said one of Gaidar’s entourage was “very clear” that the architect of Russia’s market reforms was feeling ill on his way to Dublin, “particularly during a stopover at Budapest airport”.

Irish detectives are investigating the ex-politician’s movements before his collapse, which came after the death from radiation poisoning of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in Britain.

They said inquiries into Gaidar’s illness, which Russian doctors are at a loss to explain, according to Gaidar’s aides, had uncovered no public health risk.

Gaidar, 50, a former acting prime minister who is now an influential academic, was taken to hospital after he collapsed during a visit to Ireland last Friday to publicise his new book. He was later moved to a Moscow hospital.

His illness followed the death of Litvinenko, who accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of killing him. The Kremlin has denied any link to the death.

Martin said reports from Moscow saying Gaidar was unconscious for three hours were “patently untrue”.

“He was speaking to the ambulance men when he was taken by ambulance and unconscious people are very unlikely to be talking to people when they walk into an ambulance,” Martin said.

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