British police said on Wednesday they were now treating the death of poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko as murder, raising the stakes in an investigation that has extended from London to Moscow.
”Detectives investigating the death of Alexander Litvinenko have reached the stage where it is felt appropriate to treat it as an allegation of murder,” London police said in a statement.
Britain’s embassy in Moscow also announced small traces of radiation had been found on its premises, but said they were too small to be harmful and declined to say if the radiation was polonium 210 — the poison found in Litvinenko’s body.
Litvinenko, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, began complaining of feeling ill on November 1. He died in London three weeks later from radiation poisoning.
The former KGB agent accused Putin of ordering his assassination. Russia denies any involvement, but the case has revived diplomatic tensions between London and Moscow.
British police, who sent a team to Moscow to question witnesses who met Litvinenko in London, said detectives were keeping an open mind and following the evidence. They had previously said they treated his death as suspicious.
”It is important to stress that we have reached no conclusions as to the means employed, the motive or the identity of those who might be responsible for Mr Litvinenko’s death,” the police statement added.
Inquiry in Moscow
In Moscow, British police and investigators from Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika’s office on Wednesday questioned Dmitry Kovtun, one of at least two Russians who met the ex-spy the day he fell ill.
Investigators met Kovtun in the same hospital where ex-KGB agent Andrei Lugovoy, a high-profile figure in the affair, was being treated, apparently for radiation poisoning.
While admitting to meeting Litvinenko in a London hotel on November 1, Lugovoy has denied any involvement in his death.
The small group of British detectives who arrived in Moscow on Monday were virtually relegated to the role of observers by chief prosecutor Chaika who has publicly insisted Russian authorities will direct interviews on Russian soil.
Back in London, an Italian contact of Litvinenko was on Wednesday discharged from a hospital which had been monitoring him for radiation poisoning.
Mario Scaramella had been admitted to hospital last Friday after radioactive polonium 210, the same poison that killed Litvinenko, was detected in his body.
Speaking to Reuters after being discharged from University College Hospital, Scaramella said he felt well.
”I’m fine. I’m sure of that. What I’m waiting for is the official analysis on my urine sample,” Scaramella said.
Also speaking in London, an exiled Kremlin opponent accused the West of standing by as Russia passed laws allowing its agents to hunt down opponents overseas, saying these had led to the poisoning of Litvinenko, a close friend.
Chechen separatist Akhmed Zakayev linked his suspected murder to the authorisation given by Russia’s Parliament in July for Putin to send soldiers or special forces anywhere in the world to fight those whom Moscow sees as terrorists.
”Not one of the political leaders of Western countries who were meeting under Putin’s chairmanship in the Group of Eight made any protest about this,” Zakayev told Reuters. – Reuters