The polonium-210 poisoner who claimed the life of the former spy Alexander Litvinenko may never face British justice because Russian citizens cannot be extradited to stand trial.
As a team of Scotland Yard detectives touched down at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Monday night to interview a series of possible witnesses, the scale of the judicial and political problems which they are likely to face was becoming clear.
Their arrival coincided with the news that a room in the British embassy in Moscow is to be tested for radioactive contamination; it is thought that the room is where businessmen Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun gave a statement about their London meeting with Litvinenko to Britain’s deputy ambassador on November 23.
“It is precautionary testing to protect our staff, and we do not expect to find anything,” said a spokesperson for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.”It’s very unusual, but then the case is unusual because radioactive material is involved.”
There were also growing signs that the death of Litvinenko, and the repeated claims by his associates that he was murdered on the Kremlin’s orders, are damaging relations between the two states. British officials attempted to play down talk of any strain, but Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said: “It is of course damaging our relations.”
Meanwhile, two fresh locations were being tested for any polonium-210 contamination on Monday night, health officials said: Parkes hotel in Knightsbridge, where one of Litvinenko’s business associates stayed in October; and an office at Cavendish Place, central London, thought to be used by property and security companies.
There is no bilateral extradition treaty between Russia and the United Kingdom, and legislation passed by Russia to deal with one-off requests by European countries prohibits the extradition of its citizens. When signing up to the European convention on extradition in 1996, Russia granted itself an exemption in accordance with article 61 of the state’s Constitution, which says: “A Russian citizen cannot be sent beyond the borders of the Russian Federation or given to another state.”
A spokesperson for the prosecutor general’s office said that according to the convention and the Russian criminal code, a Russian could not be given to another state for a trial: “He can only be tried in the Russian Federation with the participation of the necessary foreign experts.”
Moscow lawyer Dimitri Afanasiev said that because the Russian Parliament had ratified the exemption, any extradition would need parliamentary approval. “I don’t see any way that it could be overruled other than by an act of Parliament,” he said. The only other way would be for suspects to be tried in Russia.
Also, Russia responds to any extradition request with repeated demands for the extradition of Russians in the UK. Moscow has attempted to secure the return of 16 émigrés, but has been rebuffed because the Brisith Home Office accepts they are targets of politically driven prosecutions and could not expect a fair trial.
This group includes Boris Berezovsky, the multimillionaire who once employed Litvinenko, and Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen separatist who lived opposite Litvinenko, as well as former executives of the Yukos oil giant. Moscow has repeatedly tried to extradite Berezovsky, most recently accusing him of plotting a coup.
Sergei Markov, an analyst, said he expected a politically charged bargaining process if Scotland Yard wanted to charge Russians and take them for trial in London. “The Russian authorities will raise the issue of some kind of exchange,” he said. “It’s clear that Russia would demand certain persons who are accused of criminal activity, including Berezovsky.”
The British Foreign Office confirmed on Monday night that no one has ever been extradited between the two states. A spokesperson said it it was too early to speculate on whether it expected difficulties in bringing any suspects to trial in Britain.
A team of up to nine detectives and support staff arrived at Moscow on Monday night to interview around five potential witnesses: three Russian businessmen who were among the last to see Litvinenko before he was taken ill — and who have repeatedly protested their innocence — and two others not publicly been identified. The team, headed by a detective superintendent from the Yard’s new counter-terrorism command, will be given a Russian police escort as they travel around the city.
As the detectives were arriving, Lavrov pointedly warned the British government against any “politicisation” of the affair. After speaking in Brussels of the way it had damaged relations, he said he had spoken directly to Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, “about the necessity to avoid any kind of politicisation of this matter, this tragedy”.
Britain sought to play down his remarks. “We do not see tensions,” a source said. “Sergey Lavrov is just responding to the intense media interest.”
In two conversations about the affair last week, Lavrov expressed concern about a “death-bed statement” attributed to Litvinenko, in which he accused Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder. Lavrov denied he had formally protested about the statement being allowed to be issued, but Britain is not disputing a Sunday newspaper report which claimed Beckett told the Cabinet last Thursday that Moscow had “taken exception” to it.
The British Home Secretary, John Reid, also speaking in Brussels, said he had told EU interior ministers there was little danger to the public from polonium-210: “People may feel concerned because of the fact that one millionth of one gram of polonium can result in illness or death — but the traces we are finding in places are no more than one millionth of one millionth of a gram.” Meanwhile, the second man suffering from polonium-210 poisoning, Mario Scaramella, was said not to have any significant ill-effects.
In a separate development, the former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar, receiving medical care since contracting a mystery illness last month, was released from a Moscow hospital on Monday night. Gaidar (50) fell ill in Ireland on November 24, a day after Litvinenko died. His aides initially said doctors in Moscow suspected he had been poisoned, but the cause of his illness remains unknown. – Guardian Unlimited Â