An Italian court ruled Thursday that controversial KGB expert Mario Scaramella - the last person to see radiation poison victim Alexander Litvinenko before he fell ill - should stay in jail for slandering an ex-KGB general and compiling secret dossiers on Italian Premier Romano Prodi.
A judge tasked with saying whether prisoners should remain in custody found that the charges against him had been substantiated by prosecutors, judicial sources said.
The news of the anti-Prodi dossier was the first official confirmation of allegations that have appeared in the Italian press for months.
The self-styled expert on the KGB and nuclear trafficking, whose credibility has been undermined since he acted as consultant to a parliamentary probe into Soviet-era spying, supped with ex-KGB colonel and anti-Putin dissident Litvinenko before he came down with radiation poisoning and eventually died in November.
The judge's ruling was also motivated by a fear that Scaramella might try to flee the country, judicial sources said.
He will therefore stay in Rome's Regina Coeli prison, where he has been held since he returned from London on Christmas Eve.
Scaramella has been questioned twice since his arrest, denying all charges.
In the meantime one former KGB general he pestered during his work on the Mitrokhin Commission has called him a "mental case".
In the political arena, centre-left officials have reiterated claims that the panel, set up by the government of former premier Silvio Berlusconi, was a thinly veiled attempt to smear then opposition leader
Left-leaning Rome daily La Repubblica claimed Wednesday that Scaramella was still touting dossiers against Prodi in September, five months after Prodi ousted Berlusconi.
"Who was behind these smears - and who bankrolled it" it asked, alleging that 20,000 euros had been found in a foreign bank account linked to the panel.
Despite his high-profile involvement in the Litvinenko case, Scaramella's downfall initially came in a much less reported slander case. SEVERAL PROBES, FIRST ARRESTED IN LESSER CASE.
The initial charge that led to his arrest was that of slandering a Ukrainian ex-KGB man Scaramella accused of plotting to murder him and the head of the commission he was working for, Paolo Guzzanti of Berlusconi's Forza Italy party.
Scaramella is also under investigation for trafficking in arms and hazardous waste, breaching Italy's official secrets law and smearing San Marino politicians in a murky uranium trafficking case he himself 'exposed'.
The Berlusconi-led government set up its Mitrokhin Commission in 2004 to look into possible Soviet moles or double agents.
According to the Italian press, wiretaps between Guzzanti and Scaramella have revealed an attempt to dig up dirt on Prodi before the April elections in which Prodi beat Berlusconi.
The Mitrokhin Commission - so-called after KGB archivist Vassily Mitrokhin who secretly amassed copies of KGB files he later smuggled to the West - was wound up in March without finding evidence against any Italian political figure.
Scaramella supped with Litvinenko in London on November 1, the night the former KGB colonel fell ill from what eventually turned out to be poisoning from a deadly radioactive substance called polonium 201.
He died three weeks later after accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his death.
Moscow has denied the claim as "ridiculous nonsense".
Scaramella later spent a few days in a London hospital after traces of polonium 201 were found in his body.
He initially claimed to have five times the amount that killed Litvinenko, but doctors said he had a negligible and harmless amount.
In one of the wiretaps published by the Italian press, Guzzanti presses Scaramella to get "watertight" proof that Litvinenko fingered Prodi as "our man".
Prodi has announced legal action to defend his name while Guzzanti claims his life is still in danger.
Guzzanti has also claimed the media and judicial probes against Scaramella are solely aimed at discrediting the work of his commission and the Italian secret service.
In particular, he denied a centre-left MP's claim that he had circulated Litvinenko's alleged statement on Prodi ahead of the general election.
Guzzanti said he had "merely" published a British Euro-MP's report that Litvinenko had reportedly been advised by a Soviet ex-KGB general not to come to Italy because Prodi was "our man".
Scaramella has been held in solitary confinement at Regina Coeli since his arrest.
His lawyer said he would appeal Thursday's ruling to the Supreme Court.
