BA airliner, cleared to return to London, leaves Moscow

MOSCOW, December 1 (RIA Novosti) - A British Airways airliner singled out for radiation tests as part of investigations into the death of a Russian ex-FSB officer in London last week has left Moscow for London, the airport's press service said Friday.

Britain's civil aviation authorities cleared the Boeing-767 passenger jet, grounded for two days at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, to return to London for a radioactive screening, BA said in a statement earlier Friday.

The plane has left Moscow without passengers.

Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin's administration and a close associate of exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, died in a London hospital with symptoms of radioactive poisoning November 23. British health officials said a large dose of polonium-210, a radioactive, toxic uranium by-product, was found in his body.

Following Litvinenko's death, Western media circulated a message purporting to be his deathbed note, in which he accused Putin of orchestrating his death, an allegation the president dismissed.

In ongoing investigations run by Scotland Yard, trace amounts of radiation were detected on two other BA planes Wednesday.

BA quoted British health officials as saying the risk to passengers who flew on the planes was very low.