How death caught up with dissidents in Britain

POLITICAL ASYLUM seekers must be made to feel “completely safe” in Britain, the widow of Alexander Litvinenko said after the apparent murder attempt on Sergei Skripal.

Marina Litvinenko, whose husband died in London in 2006, three weeks after drinking tea laced with a radioactive poison, said: “It just shows how we need to take it seriously, all of these people asking for security and for safety in the UK.

“We need to be sure people receiving political asylum here are completely safe.”

Mr Litvinenko had been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, and the long-delayed inquiry into his death concluded that his killing had “probably” been carried out with the approval of the Russian president.

The deaths in the UK of several other high-profile victims have also been the subject of speculation over whether foul play was involved.

Alexander Perepilichnyy collapsed while out jogging near his home in Weybridge, Surrey, in November 2012.

An inquest, which is due to resume in mid-April, is looking at whether he died from natural causes or was poisoned.

Human rights campaigner Bill Browder said Mr Perepilichnyy had told him he had been receiving death threats, “making it reasonably likely that a Russian assassin was on the loose in the UK”.

Meanwhile, the circumstances surrounding the death of the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky remain uncertain after a coroner recorded an open verdict in March 2014.

The case of the Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov also remains a mystery. He was assassinated in London in 1978 with a poison-loaded umbrella tip.

The murder involved a minuscule dose of ricin, a toxin produced naturally by the castor bean plant. Doctors at first thought he had an especially serious case of blood poisoning.