Litvinenko 'suspect' denies claims
A BUSINESSMAN linked to the death of poisoned Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko yesterday hit out at “lies, provocation and government propaganda”, denying any role in the murder.
Andrei Lugovoi said reports naming him as a suspect in the murder were an attempt by British authorities to make up for a lack of evidence against him.
He said: “This is all lies, provocation and government propaganda by the United Kingdom. They are trying to make up for their poor hand.”
It was reported last week that senior officials at Scotland Yard believed there was enough evidence against Lugovoi for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether he should face prosecution.
Litvinenko, a Kremlin critic who was granted asylum in Britain, died in late November after ingesting the rare radioactive isotope polonium-210.
He met Lugovoi and two other Russian men, Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, at the Millennium Hotel in London on November 1, the day he fell ill. Litvinenko, 43, died on November 23.
In a deathbed statement, he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder - allegations which the Kremlin strongly denies.
Earlier this month, it was claimed that Litvinenko was likely to have been the target of “multiple” poisoning attempts before his death.
He visited a number of central London venues on the day that he fell ill, including a sushi bar in Piccadilly.
But it was claimed that the first attempt to poison him with polonium-210 may have come more than two weeks before November 1, when he met Lugovoi and Kovtun at the sushi bar on October 16.
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http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1528
