The Scaramella Affair

On March 10 the Italian newspaper Panorama published an article by Senator Paolo Guzzanti, who headed the so-called ‘Mitrokhin Commission’ for the investigation of the activity of the KGB in Italy. Guzzanti suggests that the death of Kommersant journalist Ivan Safronov, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, and the murder of FSB General Anatoly Trofimov in spring 2005 are all links in a single chain, and that all three men were killed because they possessed information that compromised Italian prime minister Romano Prodi. In a Svobodanews.ru interview broadcast on the same day, intelligence historian Boris Volodarsky talked about his recent meeting with Mario Scaramella, who worked closely with Guzzanti, was the last person to meet with Litvinenko, and is now being held in an Italian prison on obscure and not fully specified charges that are quite unrelated to the Litvinenko poisoning. In the interview, Volodarsky suggests that Scaramella may have fallen victim to a disinformation campaign organized by the FSB.

Update: an earlier interview by Volodarsky, in which he gives an account of a visit to Scaramella in prison, is here.

Update 2: Mario Scaramella is currently in hospital after suffering a series of heart attacks, Paolo Guzzanti reports.