Ex-KGB agent accused in death of former spy
By Tom Hundley and Alex Rodriguez
Chicago Tribune
LONDON -- The poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB colonel and outspoken critic of the Kremlin, seemed to have a cast of characters from a John le Carré novel. It captured the imagination of the international media and raised unsettling questions about the alleged involvement of the Russian government.
On Tuesday, Britain's Crown Prosecution Service made a formal request for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, another former KGB agent who had tea in a London hotel with Litvinenko on Nov. 1. Litvinenko fell ill almost immediately after the meeting and died Nov. 23. The death was attributed to poisoning by radioactive polonium-210. The vast majority of the world's supply of polonium-210 is manufactured at a state-owned Russian laboratory near Samara.
Russia's response to the extradition request: "In accordance with Russian law, citizens of Russia cannot be turned over to foreign states," said Marina Gridneva, a spokeswoman for the Russian prosecutor general's office.
As a result, Russia's relations with Britain appeared to be heading toward a post-Cold War low. "We are not talking about a liberal democracy here," said James Nixey, a Russia analyst at Chatham House, a London research institute.
Tuesday's extradition request, in which British officials said they had sufficient evidence to charge Lugovoi with "deliberate poisoning" in the "extraordinarily grave crime," had been expected for weeks.
A deepening chill between Russia and the West was apparent last week in an icy summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and European Union leaders. The two sides traded barbs over energy policy and human rights. "Relations have been bad for quite a while. This adds to it," Nixey said of the extradition request.
Legal experts and diplomats say there is little chance Lugovoi will see the inside of a British courtroom and little Britain can do about it.
Lugovoi maintains his innocence and called the charges politically motivated. Lugovoi told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti: "I didn't kill Litvinenko. I have no relation to his death and I have all the grounds to express my distrust for the so-called evidence that the British justice system has gathered."
Although the Russian Constitution prohibits the extradition of Russian citizens, the law does allow for the prosecution of a Russian citizen within Russia if there is evidence the person committed a crime on foreign soil.
Gridneva, the spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office, said Russian investigators would be willing to look at the evidence amassed by British prosecutors against Lugovoi.
Lugovoi worked at the KGB and its successor agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), from 1987 to 1996.
His relationship with Litvinenko dates back a decade, when Lugovoi headed security at ORT, a Russian television channel then owned by Moscow oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who has angered Moscow by openly calling for the overthrow of the Russian government by force. Litvinenko and Berezovsky became friends after Litvinenko publicly accused his FSB bosses of asking him to help assassinate Berezovsky.
After leaving the FSB in 1998, Litvinenko was jailed on charges of disclosing classified information. The charges were dropped, and Litvinenko left Russia with his wife and son, eventually gaining asylum in Britain.
Lugovoi, meanwhile, became a partner in a soft-drinks enterprise and a security company co-owned by Dmitry Kovtun, also a key figure in the investigation. Kovtun accompanied Lugovoi to the meeting with Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel on Nov. 1.
Radioactive traces were found at a dozen sites across London after Litvinenko's death Nov. 23, including three hotels, a soccer stadium, two planes and an office building used by Berezovsky. More than 1,000 people in Britain and abroad were tested for polonium-210 contamination.
German investigators also found traces of polonium-210, the radioactive poison used against Litvinenko, in the apartment of Kovtun's former wife in Hamburg, in two cars he used there and in a government office he visited.
Although Litvinenko, 43, said in his deathbed statement that Putin was linked to his poisoning, no ties between Lugovoi, Kovtun and the Kremlin have surfaced.
Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.
