|
|
 |
Germans Beat Scotland Yard in Finding a Suspect
The prosecutor of Hamburg has sent a request to the Russian Prosecutor General's Office for legal aid in a case of smuggling of radioactive materials in which Dmitry Kovtun, a Russian businessman living in Germany, is a suspect. Kovtun met in London on November 1 with political emigrant Alexander Litvinenko, who later died of poisoning from radioactive Polonium-210. Kovtun has been diagnosed with radiation sickness, but chief prosecutor of Hamburg Martin Kenke thinks that he was both victim and perpetrator of poisoning. The results of medical testing of Andrey Lugovoi, who was with Kovtun when he met with Litvinenko in the Mayfair Millennium Hotel in London and is now in the same hospital as Kovtun in Moscow, will be released on Friday.
Kovtun is not commenting on the smuggling case, but Lugovoi called the charges prevocational and offensive. “You can't call it anything other than a cheap show,” he told Kommersant. “Police with dogs landed on the roof of the house out of a helicopter to obtain a urine sample.” That was how German police entered the home of Kovtun's former mother-in-law. Lugovoi also accuses Western media of libel for publishing unsubstantiated, in his opinion, information about him and his friends Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko (who was in London with Lugovoi and Kovtun) and accusing them of involvement in Litvinenko's poisoning.
Sokolenko told Kommersant that he did not know Litvinenko, although he had “heard a lot about him.” In the late 1990s, Sokolenko was Lugovoi's deputy in the ORT television security service. He now also works for a security service headed by Lugovoi and said that he was examined for Polonium-210 exposure in November with negative results.
Sokolenko told Kommersant that he arrived in London on October 31 with Lugovoi and Lugovoi's wife and three children. Kovtun arrived the next day from Hamburg. “On November 1, Andrey Lugovoi's wife and children and I left the Millennium Hotel at about 10:00 for an excursion through London and returned around 5:00. We met Andrey [Lugovoi] and Dmitry [Kovtun] in the lobby on the first floor, and I don't remember who was with them then.” He said that he had a room on the third floor of the hotel, and the Lugovois lived in Room 441. That room has been sealed by the British police.
“On the next day,” Sokolenko continued, “we went on another excursion. I took no interest in what Andrey and Dmitry did while we were gone… On November 3, we all flew to Moscow. I am surprised by the insinuations around my name. I went to London for the Arsenal-CSKA [soccer] match because I am a long-time fan of CSKA. I have been to other matches abroad and nothing other than soccer interested me in London. We were planning to go to Hamburg for a match on December 6 but, of course, after the whole story with Litvinenko, we weren't able to.”
www.commersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 13, 2006
|
|
|
