Zakayev is himself no stranger to international intrigue. A former actor born in Kazakhstan in 1959, he was a field commander during the first Chechen war and represented Chechnya at the peace talks in 1996 that ended the war. After being wounded when conflict erupted again in Grozny in 2000, Zakayev fled to London. In 2002 he was accused by Russia of having been involved in the planning of the Dubrovka theater siege in Moscow by Chechen separatists. The next year a British judge rejected Russia’s request for extradition and Zakayev was granted political asylum.

Zakayev, through a translator, spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Ginanne Brownell in London about Litvinenko’s death. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: How would you characterize your friendship with Litvinenko? You were neighbors, correct?

Akhmed Zakayev: We were both people who thought in the same way. We were also neighbors, but most importantly, we were close friends. I knew about Alexander since about 1996, but I did not meet him until the spring of 2002 in London. Boris Berezovsky introduced us to each other. From the autumn of 2002 we became very good friends.

In 2003 bombs were thrown at Litvinenko’s house and at your home. What happened?

It happened on the same day, in a matter of minutes. It was a Molotov cocktail, and it was thrown towards the kitchen at my house, and about five minutes later, the same at Alexander’s home. We both knew that the pressure would be building up. And in fact it was Alexander who told me about what things might happen and how to prevent and protect myself from these things. Those little bomblets were small provocation. It was not going to kill us. It was done to create some hype about it. The police opened an investigation, but what was important was that Alexander was convinced that the Russians would not dare to do anything serious to either of us in Britain.

Assuming the Russians were involved in Litvinenko’s death, why do you think there might have been a change in tactics?

First of all, I need to say that I am now a witness in the investigation, and I cannot comment on [specifics] in the press because I told openly what I think to the investigating team, to the police, but I cannot go against that. What I think happened is that they got Alexander in part because once he got his British citizenship this year, he became too relaxed and perhaps he was not as ready and cautious as he could have been. And also I think the Russian special forces did not expect the Brits to figure out what killed him, because look at all the evidence, a country with all its expertise and technology, it took them three weeks to figure out what poisoned him. Only about three hours before he died they figured out it was polonium. I do not think that the special forces thought people would figure out exactly what killed him. It also helped build this image of this secretive and unknown force that killed him.

What do you think about the grounding of these British Airways flights in London and Moscow? Does it make the case for Russian involvement stronger?

There is a clear Moscow link here. Even before this was announced by the British police I strongly felt that it was done from Moscow.

Is poison a calling card by the Russian secret police, the FSB? The president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, was presumably poisoned when he was running for president two years ago and there was speculation it may have been linked to the FSB.

Litvinenko himself, around the time that Yushchenko was poisoned, was writing a story called “Poison is the FSB’s Gun,” and he was writing about a poison lab in Moscow that was closed in 1995 by then-president Boris Yeltsin that was reopened in 2002. And it does lead to Russia, but now the question we are asking is: has it been done directly by the Russian government or was it done by a structure in Russia, which is not part of the government and kind of not controlled by the government? But either way it is a danger that has come from that part of the world, and Western governments should think about what can and should be done about it.

Do you think the British government is doing enough to put pressure on the Kremlin in this investigation?

I think that the reaction of the British government has been totally adequate. OK, there were not a lot of concrete things that they were doing at the beginning to investigate this case, but there was not enough evidence to show where it came from. And I am absolutely sure that once the British government has all the facts in hand, they are not going to cover up anything to be political. Because it happened on British soil, I think they will react adequately and do all the things necessary to protect their citizens.

How was Litvinenko in the hospital?

Alexander knew from the first night that he was sick, who and when they poisoned him. In the first stages he was still quite active and strong. He was not the dying, very tired man that people saw in the photographs that later came out. He was a very strong man, he would run 12 kilometers a day, he had a strong heart. And only in the two weeks after it happened and his hair started to fall out did he, and later I, feel that his life might be in danger. When his hair started falling out, then things got serious, and the doctors thought out it was thallium [a highly toxic element] and started giving him antidotes, and they moved him to University College Hospital in London. After the first day at the UCL hospital where I spent the whole day with him, Alexander called me in the middle of the night to say that he was being moved to the intensive care unit. And he was quite surprised because the doctors seemed to be expecting some kind of crisis.

What was your last conversation like with Litvinenko?

The day after he was in intensive care, I came to visit Alexander with my eldest son. Alexander’s wife Marina and their son were there, and we had a very personal moment. That is when he felt he was dying, though he did not want to tell his wife that straight away. And I do not want to go into all the personal things he told me, but one thing he did was that he drew a line in the air with his hand near his bed—was he said to his wife, “Marina, you know I have always been fighting a war, and I am dying fighting a war, and this is the front line. This is where it is, where my bed is. And I am dying, they have got me but they did not break me. So don’t cry and don’t be broken yourself.” It sounds all very strong, but it only sounds like that. It was very real, it was not a political declaration. And two days later, he was gone.

Are you personally scared for your security—that even on British shores you are still not safe when people may be after you?

Lots of people ask me if I am afraid. I am not personally afraid not because I am brave but because you cannot live your life scared. What we need to remember is that this was a murder not done against a Russian political dissident. It was a murder against a British citizen. Alexander was very proud to be a British citizen. What we hope is that British society and the government will not allow this to happen to their own people on their own soil and there will be an adequate reaction to what had happened and they will find out the truth.