Litvinenko A Jihadi?

A couple days ago I cautioned about pointing fingers too directly at Putin in the Litvinenko assassination affair. Now there's this, from the Sunday Express in London:

The radiation spy scandal took a sensational twist last night with the revelation that KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko had converted to Islam before he died.

Scotland Yard detectives are now trying to discover if he had any secret links with Islamic extremist terror groups.

Their biggest fear is that the former Soviet spy, who died of polonium-210 poisoning in a London hospital, may have been helping Al Qaeda terrorists or other extremist groups get hold of radioactive material to be used in a devastating “dirty” atom bomb. ...

Litvinenko’s conversion to Islam was a closely guarded secret and came as a complete shock to his close Russian friends in Britain.

The shock admission came from his next-door neighbour, moderate Muslim and Chechen dissident Akhmed Zakayev, who revealed: “He was read to from the Koran the day before he died and told his wife that he wanted to be buried in accordance with Muslim tradition.”

Like everything in this story, the newest report could be a foil or the result of some nefarious dude trying to protect himself. Litvinenko ran with a crazy crowd, and his dying statements about "hearing angels' wings" is a Christian statement, not a Muslim statement.

Personally, I see the conversion as possible ... strange things happen on deathbeds. But if it was a deathbed conversion, the link to Litvinenko and a dirty bomb is specious.

Hat-tip: Jihadi du Jour via Real Clear Politics
Related Tags: Litvinenko, Putin, Foreign affairs