LONDON, July 19 (UPI) -- According to former FSB Lt. Col. Aleksandr Litvinenko, al-Qaida's Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the Russian secret service.
Litvinenko said in an interview with Poland's Rzeczpospolita newspaper that Ayman al-Zawahiri, number two in al-Qaida's hierarchy, served as a KGB agent before becoming Osama bin Laden's right-hand man. Litvinenko said, "Ayman al-Zawahiri trained at a Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB) base in Dagestan in 1998. He was then transferred to Afghanistan where he became Osama bin Laden's deputy. I was working in that section at the time and I can confirm the fact Zawahiri was not the only link between the FSB and al-Qaida."
Litvinenko was arrested in Moscow in 1999 and was imprisoned for nine months on charges of abuse of office. Litvinenko was subsequently acquitted of all charges and in 2000 emigrated to London, where he was given political asylum. Litvinenko has accused his FSB superiors of carrying out the August 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow, which re-ignited the Chechen war, and also of ordering him to kill Russia's exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, also living in London.
In 2002 Litvinenko was tried in absentia by a Russian court and sentenced to three-and-a-half-years in prison for abuse of office and stealing explosives. The sentence was subsequently suspended.
