LONDON - British officials sought on Saturday to allay public health fears following the killing by radiation poisoning of a former Russian spy who blamed his mysterious death on President Vladimir Putin.
Police were scrutinising security camera footage taken when Alexander Litvinenko, a Kremlin critic who became a British citizen last month, met contacts in a sushi restaurant and a London hotel before falling ill.
"You may succeed in silencing one man. But a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life." Alexander Litvinenko, Russian ex-spy
Litvinenko died on Thursday night after a three-week illness that saw his hair fall out, his body waste away and his organs slowly fail. In a statement read out after his death, he accused Putin of what would be the Kremlin's first political assassination in the West since the Cold War.
"You may succeed in silencing one man. But a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life," he said.
The British government said on Saturday that Litvinenko's body had been moved from the hospital where he died to a London mortuary.
"All the necessary health and safety precautions were taken after a full risk assessment by the Health Protection Agency. The body is now the responsibility of the coroner."
Asked whether a post-mortem would be conducted, a government source told Reuters: "The question ... is being considered against the difficulty there may be in opening him up."
The agency (HPA) urged the public to call a telephone hotline for advice if they had been at any of the locations where traces of the rare radioactive isotope Polonium 210 -- discovered in Litvinenko's body - were found.
"We are trying to pin down anybody who might have been in contact with any of the radioactivity," said Pat Troop, HPA chief executive. "He may have left some on a surface. If they take it off that surface and put it all into their mouths, that's when they might be at risk," she told BBC television.
Police had found radioactive traces at the restaurant, the hotel and Litvinenko's home. Officials were preparing to decontaminate the restaurant after police finished their search.
The British Foreign Office said it had asked Moscow to pass on any information that might help the police inquiry.
Putin shrugged off Litvinenko's charge.
"It is a great pity that even something as tragic as a man's death is being used for political provocation," he said.
European politicians urged Putin to help the investigation and warned of potentially grave consequences for Russia.
"Should it turn out that the Russian secret services were actually involved in the murder of Litvinenko, it would be a very serious matter," said Martin Schulz, Socialist leader in the European Parliament.
Others suggested the death was part of a plot to discredit the Kremlin, noting that Litvinenko's drawn-out death would have given him time to tell any damaging secrets he was harbouring.
Russian daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda speculated: "Such a chain of events plays right into the hands of those who would wish to compromise Russia in the world arena and to cause its leadership to fall out with Western leaders."
Alexander Goldfarb, Russian dissident and close friend of Litvinenko, responded: "This smacks to me of a classic KGB disinformation campaign to cover up their tracks."
The use of Polonium 210 suggested to experts only a sophisticated group, if not a powerful state, was behind the crime.
"This is not a tool chosen by a group of amateurs. These people had some serious resources behind them," Dr Andrea Sella, chemistry lecturer at University College London, told Reuters.
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