Family and friends of ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko held a memorial service at a London mosque yesterday as British police and Russian prosecutors wrangled for control in the international hunt for his killer.

Litvinenko's father, Walter, and Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen rebel envoy who lives in London attended the memorial at London's Regent's Park Mosque, joining hundreds of Muslims who had gathered there for regular daily prayer.

Around 30 family members and friends travelled to Britain from Russia, Italy and the United States to attend the burial yesterday in north London, according to a family friend who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details about the service.

Litvinenko was buried at London's Highgate Cemetery the site where revolutionary thinker and philosopher Karl Marx was buried in 1883, the family friend said.

Vladimir Bukovsky, Litvinenko's friend and a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the ex-spy had asked his body eventually be moved to Chechnya.

"On his deathbed he asked to be buried when the war is over in Chechen soil," Bukovsky said after the service. "He was a fierce defender of Chechnya and critic of the Kremlin."

UK police treat case as murder

British police on Wednesday confirmed the former agent's poisoning was now being treated as murder rather than as a suspicious death.

But a scheduled interview with ex-KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi, who met Litvinenko the day he fell ill and is regarded as a key witness, was postponed yesterday for "technical reasons," Lugovoi's lawyer said.

Russian prosecutors said they had also opened a criminal case over Litvinenko's death and the attempted killing of his associate Dmitry Kovtun. The Prosecutor-General's office said opening a case would allow suspects to be prosecuted in Russia.

Officials in Moscow said previously that Russia would not extradite any suspects to London over the former agent's death.

Lugovoi said he would answer all the British investigators' questions, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported.

Muslim convert

Litvinenko's father Walter told Radio Free Europe on Wednesday that his son had told him he had converted to Islam two days before his death. Several friends also said the former agent had converted.

A Russian friend, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the Litvinenko family had decided to hold a non-religious burial because they feared an "inevitable attempt by Litvinenko's enemies to portray him as an associate of Islamist extremists."

"It was a deeply personal thing, the result of a very intimate personal process, and there's absolutely no connection to his political views," the friend said.

However, Alexander Goldfarb, a friend, insisted the former agent had not converted, despite sharing empathy with Muslims.

Zakayev said that on November 22, the day before the former KGB agent died, Litvinenko was visited in hospital by an imam, who read a Quranic verse traditionally said over the dying.

Litvinenko, who was poisoned with the rare radioactive element polonium-210, was buried in traditional coffin, Goldfarb said. The Health Protection Agency said in a statement that as long as the coffin is sealed, it poses no public health risk.

"Officials had told the family that had they wanted to cremate the body they would have first had to wait 22 years for the radioactive material to decay," Goldfarb said.

Mario Scaramella an Italian security expert who met Litvinenko on November 1, the day the agent fell ill was in good health after being discharged from London's University College Hospital on Wednesday, hospital spokesman Ian Lloyd said. Scaramella was admitted to the hospital after also testing positive for polonium-210.

Faint levels of the same element had been found at two locations at London's Emirates Stadium, where Lugovoi attended a soccer match November 1, officials said on Wednesday.

The radiation was "barely detectable" and posed no public health risk, government health agency spokeswoman Katherine Lewis said.

Source: China Daily