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Litvinenko Widow Asks Putin to Find Killers
The widower of murdered former Russian security service officer Alexander Litvinenko has made a desperate plea to Russian President Vladimir Putin to find her husband’s killers. In a letter to President Putin, published in The Daily Mail on Sunday, Marina Litvinenko wrote that if he does not assist the UK authorities in finding the culprits, she will assume he is personally responsible for the killing.
Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko died in a London hospital on November 23 last year after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210.
Marina Litvinenko underscores that she has never said President Putin is ultimately responsible. “I said that if you did not make every effort to assist in the discovery of the perpetrators of this terrible crime, I could only assume that you must have something to hide."
“I ask that you instruct your officials to assist in bring the murders to justice," the widow writes.
Alex Goldfarb, a close friend of Alexander Litvinenko, said the letter with the plea had been sent to Russia by mail after the Crown Prosecution Service had received the results of an international investigation into Mr. Litvinenko’s mysterious death. Marina Litvinenko has been prompted to make an appeal as recent official statements from Moscow indicate that Russian authorities are hampering the investigation, Mr. Goldfarb told Kommersant. Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said, for one, that his agency would not let the British counterparts to interrogate witnesses in Moscow if the Russians were not allowed to interrogate political émigré Boris Berezovsky and Chechen separatists Akhmet Zakaev, now UK citizens, in London.
Meanwhile, The Observer reported on Sunday that Home Secretary John Reid had already given the go-ahead for the Russians to interrogate more than 100 people in London in the Litvinenko case, including Mr. Berezovsky and Mr. Zakayev. The two men earlier expressed willingness to meet Russian prosecutors in exchange for security guarantees.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 05, 2007
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