Body of ex-spy’s Italian contact high in polonium

LONDON: Mario Scaramella, who met with ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, said he had five times the amount of the radioactive substance polonium considered deadly in his body, as British police officers prepared Monday to travel to Russia to continue their inquiry.

Scaramella, an Italian self-styled security expert who met with the former spy at a London sushi bar on November 1, three weeks before Litvinenko died, was said to be “well” in University College Hospital.