(Reuters) — The Russian state must have been involved in the 2006 poisoning of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko with a radioactive isotope, which amounted to “a nuclear attack on the streets” of London, an inquiry into the death was told on Thursday (July 30).
Kremlin critic Litvinenko died weeks after drinking green tea laced with polonium-210 at London’s plush Millennium hotel. From his deathbed he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his killing but the Kremlin has always denied any role.
Richard Horwell, the lawyer acting for London police, told the inquiry the use of the rare polonium, 97 percent of the world’s supply of which was produced at a Russian nuclear site, might have put Londoners’ lives at risk.
“And we will never know how dangerous the exposure of polonium to the public at large will be and what long term effects will be visited on Londoners. Anyone who arranges for polonium-210 to be brought into a city centre, does so without any regard for human life. Mr. Emmerson has said, perhaps it was more than once, that this was a nuclear attack on the streets of London, that comment is justified. London was plunged into crisis and the scale of the Metropolitan Police Service’s response was considerable,” he said, referring to the lawyer representing Litvinenko’s widow Marina.
The controversy generated by Litvinenko’s killing plunged Anglo-Russian relations to a post-Cold War low, and the inquiry chairman has already said there was prima facie evidence of Russian culpability.
Britain has accused Russians Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy, also a former KGB agent but now a lawmaker, of actually carrying out the poisoning, but they deny any involvement and Russia has refused to extradite them.
“Those who planned Litvinenko’s murder did not want the cause of his death to be discovered. Polonium is a silent, invisible and normally unidentifiable agent of death,” Horwell said.
The inquiry has been told traces of polonium were found across London where the two men had been, including offices, hotels, planes and even the soccer stadium of Arsenal.
“The Kremlin cannot exactly complain if the eyes of the world look to it for responsibility for Litvinenko’s murder. And for all Litvinenko’s targets Putin was the one most frequently in his sights,” Horwell said.
Neither Kovtun nor Lugovoy had any personal motive and were “common murderers”, he added.
But the Russian state might want Litvinenko dead for many reasons such as his defecting to Britain where he was granted citizenship shortly before his death, his accusations about Kremlin corruption, his sympathy for Chechen separatists and his “explosive” claim that Putin was a paedophile – made in an online article in 2006 – Horwell said.
“What on earth does Russia have to hide and why these impediments to the truth. The evidence suggests that the only credible explanation is that, in one form or another, the Russian state was involved in Litvinenko’s murder,” he added.
The inquiry’s report is due by the end of the year.
