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Scotland Yard Winds Up Moscow Investigation
Scotland Yard investigators looking into the murder of Russian political emigrant Alexander Litvinenko met for the third time yesterday with the chief witness in the case, Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun. Today they return to London after 12 days in Moscow. They had planned to meet with people connected with witnesses Kovtun and Andrey Lugovoi's trips to London in October and November, as well as those of their associate Vyacheslav Sokolenko. In the Russian Prosecutor General's Office's case, Kovtun is both a witness and a victim, since he too is suffering from radiation exposure.
A source close to the Russian case says the British investigators questioned only six people in Moscow, including the businessmen mentioned above, members of their families, the lawyer of one of them and a doctor. The Times of London reports, citing a source in Scotland Yard, that the British investigators were not satisfied with the results of their collaboration with the Russian prosecutor. They hold that the prosecutor's office hindered their work by not allowing them to question the witnesses directly. They had to agree on the question with the Russians in advance. Several times they were unable to ask the questions they wanted to because the Russians refused them.
The Times also reports that the Polonim-210 used to poison Litvinenko was worth $10 million and exceeded the lethal dosage by ten times. Scotland Yard suggests that that quantity was used either to draw attention to it or out of incompetence. A Times source in the British security forces said that that quantity of Polonium cannot be purchased on the Internet or stolen from a lab. “The only two plausible explanations for the source are that it was obtained from a nuclear reactor or very well connected black market smugglers,” the specialist said.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 19, 2006
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