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Friday 19 December 2008

Lugovoi proposes a new explanation for Litvinenko’s death

Photo: carolinephotography.co.uk
The following events were reported on in this way or very similarly by most newspapers in Russia a couple of weeks ago, I didn't notice it in the British press, but I thought it was quite interesting nonetheless. With his work in the State Duma, Lugovoi is quite often on the news here and his political activities do not seem to have been tarnished by the British authorities’ demand for his extradition.
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The businessman and LDPR [ed: “Liberal Democratic Party of Russia”] deputy of the State Duma Andrei Lugovoi has declared that ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko’s death in November 2006 was most likely caused by imprudent handling of radioactive polonium that he was storing.

“Litvinenko was by nature a risk-taker; he always tried to live on the edge. It’s necessary to take into account his real hate for those authorities who were in power in Russia at that time, hate for the secret services, for anything Russian”, Lugovoi noted. Earlier he had claimed that London had something to hide; “the State machine of Great Britain has direct links with the Litvinenko’s murder”. The Law Enforcement agencies of the United Kingdom, on the contrary, accuse Lugovoi of Litvinenko’s murder. The British courts have put in a request for his arrest, but the Russian authorities are refusing his extradition, demanding proof of his guilt. This refusal has lead to the serious worsening of London-Moscow relations.

Having fled to Britain in 2000, Litvinenko passed away in November 2006. NHS specialists claim that they discovered a significant amount of radioactive polonium-210 in his body, however they are refusing to give an official cause of death and two years on the results of the investigation have still not been made public.




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