Thursday, May 31, 2007

Alexander Litvinenko Case Update

Via Yahoo News! -

LONDON (AFP) - Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky urged the man British authorities want to charge over the death of former spy Alexander Litvinenko to talk to police here, a report said Thursday.

Berezovsky also hinted that Andrei Lugovoi, his former bodyguard, may have been coerced into killing Kremlin opponent Litvinenko, though did not elaborate, the Independent newspaper said.

Lugovoi called Berezovsky following his employee Litvinenko's death by poisoning from the radioactive isotope polonium 210 last November, the businessman said in a London speech reported by the paper.

"I told him, if you are not guilty, you should come to this country -- go to Heathrow and talk to Scotland Yard," the paper quoted Berezovsky as saying.

"There is no chance you will go to jail if you are not guilty.

"I told him there was a polonium trail all over Europe, including in my office, and that he had to explain it."

Berezovsky reportedly added that "all the steps of Lugovoi just confirm that he is behind" the killing. Lugovoi has denied any involvement in Litvinenko's death.

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Via Yahoo News! -

MOSCOW - A Russian who met in London with Alexander Litvinenko and with the man whom British authorities accuse of murdering him said in an interview broadcast Tuesday that he expects he may also be accused in the former KGB agent's poisoning death.

Dmitry Kovtun expressed solidarity with Andrei Lugovoi, the Russian businessman British authorities want to prosecute in Litvinenko's poisoning, saying the accusations against him were groundless and suggesting they were politically motivated.

"I consider the charges against him completely baseless, and the fact that they haven't been made against me is quite possibly a delicate political game or simply a matter of time," Kovtun said in an interview with Russia's Ren-TV television in Moscow.

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