(Updates with new details)

Dec 7 (Reuters) - Dmitry Kovtun, a contact of dead Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, is in critical condition in hospital from radiation poisoning, Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying on Thursday.

Following are key details on the main figures in the case of the poisoning of Litvinenko:

* ALEXANDER LITVINENKO:

-- Litvinenko served in the KGB's counter-intelligence department, then the Federal Security Service's (FSB) highly secret organised crime group. The FSB is the main successor to the KGB and deals with internal threats.

-- In 1998, he turned on his former comrades and told a Moscow news conference that senior FSB officers had planned to murder Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

-- He was arrested several times by the FSB, but was freed by a court and charges were dropped. In 2000 he fled to Britain with his wife and son and was granted asylum, and eventually citizenship.

-- Litvinenko co-authored a book in 2002 entitled "Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within", in which he alleged FSB agents coordinated apartment block bombings in Russia in 1999 that killed more than 300 people. In 2002 the FSB asked Britain if it could question Litvinenko about the 1999 bombings.

-- He met several contacts on Nov. 1. He was admitted to a London hospital on Nov. 3 with what was diagnosed as radiation poisoning caused by ingesting polonium 210 and died on Nov. 23. He was buried in London's Highgate cemetery on Thursday.

* MARIO SCARAMELLA:

-- Scaramella, a little-known Italian expert on the KGB, has also been poisoned by polonium 210. He was released from a London hospital on Wednesday and is waiting for results of his latest urine test, due on Thursday. -- Scaramella helped advise the Italian parliament's Mitrokhin Commission, which probed the revelations of Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior Soviet archivist during the Cold War who defected to Britain in 1992. The commission alleged former Soviet Union leaders were behind the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981.

-- Met Litvinenko at a London sushi bar on Nov. 1 after which the Russian fell ill.

ANDREI LUGOVOY and DMITRY KOVTUN:

-- Lugovoy was a KGB officer from the late 1980s when he was in charge of protecting senior Soviet officials and later training recruits to the Kremlin guard. He left the FSB, the KGB's successor, at the end of 1996.

-- Lugovoy met Litvinenko at a London hotel on Nov. 1 but has denied any involvement in his death. He is in hospital in Russia. British police in Moscow are due to question Lugovoy. -- A Russian business partner of Lugovoy, Dmitry Kovtun was present at Lugovoy's meeting with Litvinenko on Nov. 1. British police and Russian investigators interviewed him on Wednesday in the same hospital as Lugovoy is in. Kovtun is in critical condition in hospital from radiation poisoning, Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying on Thursday.

BORIS BEREZOVSKY:

-- A Russian millionaire and implacable Putin critic now living in London. Litvinenko mixed with Kremlin adversaries including Berezovsky.

-- Berezovsky was a mathematician who went into business when Communist rule ended and rose to become a Kremlin power-broker under Russia's first post-Soviet president, Boris Yeltsin. He played a major role in securing Yeltsin's 1996 re-election against a Communist opponent.

-- After years in the Kremlin inner circle, he fell out with Putin soon after his election. Charged with corruption, Berezovsky fled to Britain and was granted political asylum.

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