The United Kingdom has requested that Russia hand over a second suspect
in the 2006 radiation poisoning of dissident Alexander Litvinenko, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday .
Word of the development came from the reputed target of a Feb. 12 extradition request from the British Crown Prosecution Service, one-time KGB agent Dmitry Kovtun.
“Representatives of the (Russian prosecutors’) Investigations Committee informed me this morning they had received a letter from U.K. prosecutors accusing me (of involvement in the murder) and demanding my arrest and extradition,” Kovtun told the newspaper.
The British agency said only that “we would neither confirm nor deny the story. We do not discuss whether or not we are seeking anyone’s extradition.”
Kovtun has been a business partner to poisoning suspect Andrei Lugovoi, another KGB veteran who is now a Russian lawmaker. Moscow has already rejected London’s request to send Lugovoi to the United Kingdom for prosecution, a stand that heightened tensions between the two nations.
Litvinenko joined Lugovoi and Kovtun at a bar in a London hotel on Nov. 1, 2006. While there, he is believed to have consumed tea tainted with the radioactive isotope polonium 210. The former KGB officer and critic of then-Russian President Vladimir Putin died 22 days later at age 43.
Both suspects received treatment for potential exposure to polonium. They have argued that any contact with the radioactive material was Litvinenko's fault as he attempted unsuccessfully to carry out a trafficking effort, or simply was an effort to make Russia look bad.
Kovtun appeared skeptical of the potential appearance of new proof linking him to the incident: “The fact they are presenting this now after five years is suspicious in itself. What new evidence can there be?”
Authorities in Germany in late 2006 identified minute amounts of polonium 210 in his former wife’s apartment in Hamburg, where Kovtun was known to stay. However, the investigation was closed after several years due to lack of evidence connecting the find to a crime, the newspaper reported .
“There is no basis to accuse me of any crime connected to this,” Kovtun said (Catherine Belton, Financial Times, Feb. 28).
http://www.nti.org/gsn/
Word of the development came from the reputed target of a Feb. 12 extradition request from the British Crown Prosecution Service, one-time KGB agent Dmitry Kovtun.
“Representatives of the (Russian prosecutors’) Investigations Committee informed me this morning they had received a letter from U.K. prosecutors accusing me (of involvement in the murder) and demanding my arrest and extradition,” Kovtun told the newspaper.
The British agency said only that “we would neither confirm nor deny the story. We do not discuss whether or not we are seeking anyone’s extradition.”
Kovtun has been a business partner to poisoning suspect Andrei Lugovoi, another KGB veteran who is now a Russian lawmaker. Moscow has already rejected London’s request to send Lugovoi to the United Kingdom for prosecution, a stand that heightened tensions between the two nations.
Litvinenko joined Lugovoi and Kovtun at a bar in a London hotel on Nov. 1, 2006. While there, he is believed to have consumed tea tainted with the radioactive isotope polonium 210. The former KGB officer and critic of then-Russian President Vladimir Putin died 22 days later at age 43.
Both suspects received treatment for potential exposure to polonium. They have argued that any contact with the radioactive material was Litvinenko's fault as he attempted unsuccessfully to carry out a trafficking effort, or simply was an effort to make Russia look bad.
Kovtun appeared skeptical of the potential appearance of new proof linking him to the incident: “The fact they are presenting this now after five years is suspicious in itself. What new evidence can there be?”
Authorities in Germany in late 2006 identified minute amounts of polonium 210 in his former wife’s apartment in Hamburg, where Kovtun was known to stay. However, the investigation was closed after several years due to lack of evidence connecting the find to a crime, the newspaper reported .
“There is no basis to accuse me of any crime connected to this,” Kovtun said (Catherine Belton, Financial Times, Feb. 28).
http://www.nti.org/gsn/
