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Key Witness Hides in Hospital from Scotland Yard
A team of Scotland Yard investigators arrived in Moscow Monday to probe into the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko. But London detectives will hardly be able to interrogate the main witness - Andrey Lugovoy is in hospital now for a repeated radiation checkup.
Scotland Yard detectives arrived in Moscow to interrogate businessmen Andrey Lugovoy, Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko. All of them are former officers of Russia’s secretive intelligence services, who met with Alexander Litvinenko in Millennium Mayfair Hotel on November 1. On that day, Litvinenko was poisoned by radioactive polonium-210, according to London police.
Most of the queries of Scotland Yard are aimed at Lugovoy, one of the main witnesses in the Litvinenko’s case and former chief of security service of the ORT TV Channel. The detectives are very much interested why the traces of radiation were found on board of planes taken by Lugovy to fly to London and back to Moscow and in the rooms of London hotels where he stayed.
But the Moscow meeting of London police with Andrey Lugovoy will hardly take place. Lugovoy, his wife and three children are in the hospital now, Lugovoy’s lawyer Andrey Romashov said. They are checked up for traces of poisoning by polonium-210. For the Lugovoys, this hospitalization is the repeated one. They signed out of the hospital past Friday and were “absolutely clean,” Lugovoy said.
But there is a former intelligence office that is much more eager to talk to the London police. It is Mikhail Trepashkin, a lawyer and a jailed officer of FSB, who is serving a four-year sentence for divulging state secrets. But there is no hope that Scotland Yard will be allowed to talk to the convict.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 05, 2006
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