The mystery surrounding the death of the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko deepened today when it emerged that Yegor Gaidar, the former Russian prime minister, may also have been poisoned.
Litvinenko, a longstanding critic of President Vladimir Putin, died in a London hospital last week. Doctors revealed that he had been poisoned with the radioactive isotope polonium-210, traces of which since been found at about a dozen locations in the UK and on two British Airways aircraft used on the London-Moscow route.
Mr Gaidar, Russia's first post-Soviet premier under Boris Yeltsin who is still ciritical of Mr Putin, fell ill last Friday, the day after Litvinenko's death, during a trip to Dublin to promote a new book.
His daughter, Maria, told the Noviye Izvestia newspaper that he had had a simple breakfast of fruit salad and tea shortly before he collapsed.
"I went up to him. He was lying on the floor unconscious. There was blood coming from his nose, he was vomiting blood. This went on for more than half an hour," she said.
Mr Gaidar, 50, remained unconscious for three hours in hospital and his life was considered in danger for the next 24 hours.
One of Mr Gaidar's aides, Valery Natarov, said today that doctors treating him at a Moscow hospital, where he appears to be making a recovery, believe that he was deliberately poisoned.
"Doctors don’t see a natural reason for the poisoning and they have not been able to detect any natural substance known to them," he said. "So obviously we’re talking about poisoning (and) it was not natural poisoning."
Mr Gaidar was Russia's first post-Soviet premier under President Boris Yeltsin and is still remembered for his painful market reforms.
He has now largely withdrawn from politics but runs an economics thinktank in Moscow, from which is often critical of Mr Putin's policies.
One of Mr Gaidar's closest allies, Anatoly Chubais, who served as his vice-premier but now heads Russia's electricity grid, connected the poisoning with the deaths of Litvinenko and of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in Moscow in October.
But instead of blaming Mr Putin - as Litvinenko himself did in a deathbed declaration - Mr Chubais said that it was the Kremlin's enemies who were to blame for the two deaths and the apparent attempt on Mr Gaidar's life.
"This deadly design would have been extremely attractive for those supporting unconstitutional, violent means of changing power in Russia," he said.
The Kremlin announced today that Mr Putin had telephoned Mr Gaidar to wish him "a speedy recovery".
Earlier today a Russian jet was surrounded by police after landing at Heathrow and its passengers forced to stay on board while experts checked it for radioactive contamination. The Boeing 737-400, leased by the private Russian airline Transaero, was later declared free of contamination and allowed to return to the Russian capital.
One passenger, Bernard Constantine of Moscow, described how the plane had been surrounded by police vehicles after it had landed and they were forced to sit on the runway for nearly an hour while radiation checks were carried out.
Mr Constantine said that they were further delayed as they waited for their baggage to be checked and unloaded. "They said it was new procedure for all flights coming from Russia," he said. "They said they were checking all passengers and luggage for radiation but nobody came and physically checked us. We were just sat waiting."
Briefing MPs today, John Reid, the Home Secretary, announced that the Russian jet had been stopped in Heathrow and said that detectives were also interested in another Russian aircraft.
Mr Reid also told the Commons that traces of radioactivity had been found at a dozen sites in the UK out of "around 24" that police have checked.
British Airways said this morning that around 2,500 passengers had telephoned a hotline after news yesterday that two of its planes that regularly fly between London and Moscow had been contaminated.
Low levels of radiation had been discovered on both aircraft and a third BA plane is stuck at Moscow airport, where it is to be examined for contamination before a decision is made on when to bring it back.
The Home Secretary backed BA officials in saying that the risk to public health was very low, largely because the radioactive isotope in question, polonium-210, only posed a threat if it was ingested and emitted its alpha radiation only over a very short distance.
An inquest into Litvinenko's death last Thursday opened today in Camden, North London, and was immediately adjourned to allow detectives to continue their inquiries.
The coroner, Dr Andrew Reid, announced that the post-mortem examination on Litvinenko's body would be held tomorrow.
A Home Office pathologist will carry out the examination with an independent pathologist and another pathologist representing Litvinenko's widow, Marina, attending. Officials said that radiation levels would be monitored carefully.
After the post-mortem is complete, Litvinenko's body will be released to his family for burial.
The implication of the BA jets' contamination has been widely drawn - that the radioactive substance that killed Litvinenko, who claimed asylum in Britain in 2000 and became a British citizen last month, had been brought over from Russia.
Outside the coroner's court today, Litvinenko's close friend, Alex Goldfarb, said that the discovery of radioactivity on board the two BA jets clearly demonstrated the Russian link.
"If you look at the flight numbers BA have released, the first flight they are interested in was five days before the poisoning - the Moscow-Heathrow flight on October 25," he said.
"This tells you that the police are looking for the ways of delivery of this material into London and this reinforces the theory that the origin of this material that killed Alexander was in Moscow.
"We still believe this is a murder perpetrated by agents of Russia’s intelligence services. We do not know who in Russia or at what echelon of power in Russian politics this might have originated from, but the fact that this highly controlled and special material, polonium 210, produced only in secure laboratories, tells us it must be state-sponsored."
Mr Goldfarb said that Mr Litvinenko had been "convinced" that Mr Putin was involved, but that he himself did not know.
But he added: "Being a rational person, I still suspect that the origin of this material is in Moscow because the police are looking at the planes between London and Moscow five days before Alexander was contaminated."
