The renegade Russian FSB agent died an agonizing death after being poisoned in late 2006 with the deadly radioactive isotope, Polonium 210.

So charged an official British inquiry chaired by Sir Robert Owen after years of investigation. Owen also accused former FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev and two former FSB agents, Andrei Lugovoi and Dimitri Kovtun.

As the first western journalists to be invited to interview KGB's then chiefs at their Lubyanka headquarters in Moscow, I've naturally been closely following the Litvinenko case since it began. Here are my views as a long-time intelligence specialist:

KGB, its predecessors, Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, MGB, and successor SVR(foreign intelligence), FSB (internal security) and military intelligence GRU, had a long tradition of liquidating defectors, turncoats and "traitors." The notorious hit squad "SMERSH" was created to kill renegades and "enemies of the state." Its most famed victim was exiled Soviet leader, Leon Trotsky.