LONDON, Dec 7: In a new twist to the on-going spy thriller involving the mysterious death of a former KGB agent, one of his friends and neighbour has claimed that Alexander Litvinenko had made a death-bed conversion to Islam just before he fell into unconsciousness on Nov 22.

Akhmed Zakayey, a Chechen dissident, further claimed that his friend had expressed a desire to be buried according to Muslim tradition.

However, other friends on Wednesday night played down the incident, saying that Mr Litvinenko had been under “heavy sedation.”

Meanwhile, Daily Telegraph on Thursday quoted friends of the former Russian spy that he would be buried in a non-denominational service in London, despite an apparent conversion to Islam.

In another related development, a Scotland Yard spokesman said it was now “considered appropriate” to treat the international investigation as an “allegation of murder”, a decision, the DT thought was based on confirmation by pathologists that Mr Litvinenko died of acute radiation.

Scotland Yard also said that they had received “good co-operation” from their counterparts in Moscow.

A former senior fraud squad detective, with extensive experience in foreign investigations, said that the Russian authorities in Russia had been surprisingly co-operative.

“The Russians are adopting exactly the same position as we would if they wanted to send detectives to interview anybody here,” he said.

He was not surprised that the British police officers had been refused permission to talk to Mikhail Trepashkin, a former FSB intelligence officer now in prison in the east of

Russia, or to serving members of the country’s equivalent of MI5.

“We would not let them waltz around talking to jailed former members of MI5 and certainly not to current ones. Can you imagine what we would think if they demanded to do something like that?”