Russia Should Carry Out Own Probe Into Spy’s Death — Official

Russia should carry out its own investigation into the poisoning death in London of former intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko, the deputy justice minister was quoted by a newspaper in Moscow as saying, Agence France-Presse reported.

Given that Litvinenko was a Russian citizen, as well as having British citizenship, “our security agencies should not be indifferent to what happened,” Vladimir Kolesnikov said in quotes carried by the Kommersant newspaper, deriving from the Interfax news agency. “We should take a procedural decision and carry out our own full, multi-faceted, objective investigation… cooperating with the security agencies of other countries including Britain,” he said.

On Tuesday Russia laid down strict ground rules for visiting British counter-terrorism police probing the poisoning and ruled out the extradition of any suspects.

The British team flew in to a frosty reception in the Russian capital on Monday and, according to a British Embassy spokesman here, has already begun their inquiries into a case that has created serious tensions between London and Moscow. While the Russian side has promised to cooperate with the investigation, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika made it clear that the British officers would only be allowed to work under tight controls.

At a tense press conference, Chaika stressed that only Russian investigators had the right to actually question witnesses in Russia and ruled out any possibility of the British team making any arrests while here or extraditing suspects. “They can’t arrest Russian citizens,” he said. “If they have to be investigated, we can do that in Russia according to a convention. We can open an inquiry… and put them on trial in Russia.”

Chaika also questioned claims made in the British media that the radioactive substance apparently used to poison Litvinenko, polonium-210, originated from Russia.

“We believe there haven’t been any losses of polonium here,” he said, adding that the British authorities would have to provide hard evidence to the contrary before prosecutors could open an investigation.

Litvinenko, who died in London on November 23, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his poisoning —- a charge sternly denied by the Kremlin which has taken umbrage at coverage of the case in the British media.

“I see no grounds for speculation actively held in Western media that this was the long arm of the KGB or FSB, that Litvinenko knew a lot and was an important intelligence officer. But that does not at all correspond to reality,” Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told the Greek Eleftherotypia newspaper Tuesday. According to Ivanov, himself a secret service veteran, Litvinenko was working in a minor role in the interior ministry when he was hired by the FSB in the mid-1990s for a newly created department combatting organised crime, and was thus unlikely to have been much of an insider.

Andrei Lugovoi, one of three Russians who met with Litvinenko in London on the day he fell ill, said Tuesday that he was willing to be interviewed by the British police team. “I am counting on meeting them in the coming days,” Lugovoi, who like Litvinenko is a former secret service agent, said in a telephone interview broadcast on NTV television. “If they show me a list of people that they want to meet and if there are names missing from that list, names that I believe would be interesting to propose to them, then I certainly will,” Lugovoi said.

According to the Kommersant newspaper, police are investigating why traces of radiation were found on the planes on which Lugovoi flew to London and returned to Moscow, and also in rooms in two London hotels where he stayed.

Traces of polonium-210 have also been at London football club Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, Britain’s Health Protection Agency said Tuesday.

Police last week listed a dozen locations where the substance, of which large quantities were found in Litvinenko’s urine, had been detected, but the Emirates Stadium was not one of them. “Minute quantities (of polonium-210) were found which were barely detectable in a couple of localised areas … there was no risk to public health,” a HPA spokeswoman told AFP. “Even the traces that were found were at barely detectable levels.”

Because there are levels at which polonium is simply “naturally occurring”, the HPA had to check it out and ensure that there was no public health risk, she added.

Three Russian men, Lugovoi, Dmitri Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, who met with Litvinenko at a central London hotel on November 1, the day he fell ill and three weeks before he eventually died, also watched a football match between Arsenal and CSKA Moscow at the Emirates Stadium, the Russian newspaper Kommersant said earlier this month.

Meanwhile Italian police raided the home and offices of Mario Scaramella, an Italian contact of Litvinenko, suspecting him of violating Italian waste management laws, the ANSA news agency said Tuesday. Scaramella is allegedly connected to a scheme involving the illegal use of building site waste.

He is in hospital in London after testing positive for a radiocative substance, but doctors have so far failed to detect any symptoms of the radiation poisoning that killed the former Russian spy Litvinenko. The raids targeted Scaramella’s home and several offices in Naples, as well as offices he regularly used in Torre del Greco, Marigliano and San Sebastiano in the Naples region.

The mass circulation daily Izvestia repeated allegations that Litvinenko had been involved in trading in radioactive materials and may have been involved with Chechen militants trying to create a “dirty bomb”.

Given links between Litvinenko, the exiled Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky and Chechen envoy Akhmed Zakayev, “one can’t exclude that the bomb was being created in Britain,” Izvestia said.

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