Akhmed Zakayev

An exiled Kremlin opponent accused the West on Wednesday of standing by passively as Russia passed laws allowing its agents to hunt down opponents overseas, saying these had led directly to the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, Reuters reports.

Chechen rebel Akhmed Zakayev, a close friend of Litvinenko, accused Western countries of helping to strengthen a “criminal regime” in Moscow by their failure to stand up to President Vladimir Putin.

He linked Litvinenko’s suspected murder in London last month to the authorization given by Russia’s parliament in July for Putin to send soldiers or special forces anywhere in the world to fight those whom Moscow sees as terrorists.

“Not one of the political leaders of Western countries who were meeting under Putin’s chairmanship in the Group of Eight made any protest about this,” Zakayev told Reuters in an interview.

“They didn’t say ’we won’t allow Russian special services to carry out murders in our countries.’ Putin took their silence for approval, and he began to implement these laws.”

Russia fiercely denies deathbed accusations by Litvinenko, a former spy who became an outspoken critic of Putin, that it ordered his killing in London last month by radiation poisoning. The macabre episode has strained relations between London and Moscow, and British police said for the first time on Wednesday they were treating it as a murder investigation.

Zakayev, a Chechen rebel leader whom Russia has tried in vain to extradite from Britain, confirmed he drove Litvinenko in his car on November 1, the same day the former agent fell ill. He said traces of polonium 210, the radioactive poison that killed Litvinenko, had been found several weeks later on the back seat where he sat. But Zakayev himself has tested negative for the substance.

“I think responsibility for everything that’s happening today in Russia lies not just with the G8 but all leaders of Western countries, European countries, who one way or another have helped to strengthen and establish this criminal regime in Moscow,” Zakayev said. “The fact that Russian democracy and freedom of speech has been betrayed —- the responsibility for that lies with those who today welcome Putin with outstretched hands and call him a crystal pure democrat.”

He said Western reliance on Russian oil and gas supplies was no excuse for passivity. “Today Europe doesn’t just get energy from there (Russia). They get polonium 210, they get the dirty bomb, they get dirty money, they get corruption, crime,” Zakayev said. “If today, this country that occupies a sixth of the earth, on whose territory is concentrated tons of bacteriological, chemical and biological weapons, isn’t taken under control and questions aren’t asked about the responsibility of the man in charge and the government, that will be a danger for the whole world.”

Zakayev won political asylum in Britain in 2003 when a court declined Russia’s request to extradite him for 13 alleged crimes including kidnapping and murder. The decision infuriated Moscow, which calls him a terrorist.

Russia’s chief prosecutor said on Tuesday that Britain would eventually have to hand over Zakayev and exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, but his office would not say if a fresh extradition request was being prepared. But Zakayev said he would not be intimidated and would keep on calling attention to human rights violations in Chechnya, where he said 100 to 150 people every month were disappearing without trace.

“I don’t have the right not to carry on…As far as my strength and ability allow, I will bring to the attention of the world the truth that I know,” he said.

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