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Four cars with tinted windows drove to north London's Highgate Cemetery, cordoned off by police, at about 1 p.m. GMT, with several dozen reporters already waiting at the gates.
Relatives and friends, including Chechen militant Ahmed Zakayev, wanted in Russia for terrorism, came to pay their last respects to Litvinenko, a British national who according to his father converted to Islam soon before his death.
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Western media reported earlier that Litvinenko's body would have to be sealed in an airtight container due to radioactivity risks, and that it cannot be cremated for 22 years.
RIA Novosti
Aftenposten has seen an email from a British human rights activist and Professor of Russian, and member of Litvinenko's network, who claims to have information that Svetlichnaya was acting on instructions from "a special bureau" - a reference to the secret service FSB - to study in London in order to have easier access to exiled Chechen leader Akhmed Zakayev.
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The British professor of Russian, who insisted on remaining nameless on this matter, accuses Svetlichnaya of being part of a "massive disinformation campaign" about the Litvinenko affair.
Human rights activist Maria Fuglevaag Warsinski called the accusations of secrecy and blackmail into question, citing Litvinenko's efforts to publicize information he gained.
"He wanted to spread this information to as many as possible and was pleased by the help he got to disseminate this to human rights activists and advocates of democracy," Warsinski said.
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Mikhail Trepashkin is the only one of the people in Russia who investigated the 1999 apartment block explosions who remains alive today. All the others - the last of which was Alexander Litvinenko - have been murdered.
The British detectives who have gone to Moscow to investigate Litvinenko's murder have been told by the Russian authorities that under no circumstances will they be permitted to interview Mr. Trepashkin, whom Moscow accuses of having betrayed state secrets.
Mikhail Trepashkin, who was arrested in 2006, is being held in a prison some 140 kilometres north of Yekaterinburg (formerly known as Sverdlovsk) on the eastern side of the Ural mountains. Although he is ill, he has been systematically tortured and exposed to extreme cold. He may soon die, and his testimony on the globally threatening events now taking place within the Russian special services, both inside Russia and in the world at large, may well be lost.
Tension between the two countries seemed certain to escalate as up to nine Scotland Yard detectives prepared to visit the Russian capital in their search for the former intelligence agent's killer.
It was revealed yesterday that the Kremlin expressed its anger to Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, last week for letting Mr Litvinenko accuse President Vladimir Putin of his murder in a deathbed statement.
The Foreign Office confirmed the existence of the letter, but officials privately denied they had been over-anxious to present Russian concerns about the affair.