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Inquiry Into Death of Litvinenko, a Putin Critic, Nears Conclusion Suspect’s Request to Testify Adds Wrinkle to Litvinenko Inquiry
(about 17 hours later)
LONDON — After 28 days of hearings, testimony by scores of witnesses and the presentation of reams of documentary evidence, a high-profile inquiry into the death of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer poisoned with radioactive polonium 210, drew toward a close on Monday. LONDON — An inquiry into the poisoning death of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer, whistle-blower and bitter foe of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, ran into a last-minute delay on Monday after one of the two suspects in the killing demanded a chance to clear his name and exonerate the Kremlin.
Throughout the inquiry, which formally began on Jan. 27 after years of British and Russian resistance, the Kremlin has remained aloof. It withdrew its participation before the inquiry started and declined to extradite two Russian citizens who have denied British accusations of murder in the case: Andrei K. Lugovoi and Dmitri V. Kovtun. The development offered one more tangle in a saga distinguished by layers of claim and counterclaim, drawn in halftones from a murky world at the intersection of political dissent, clandestine intelligence-gathering and what British lawyers have depicted as intimate ties between the elite in Moscow and organized crime.
In a last-minute development, however, the judge in charge of the inquiry ruled that the conclusion of public hearings would be delayed to permit Mr. Kovtun to participate. Mr. Litvinenko, 43, died in November 2006 after drinking tea that had been laced with a rare radioactive isotope, polonium 210. He had the tea during a meeting at a London hotel with two Russians — Andrei K. Lugovoi, a former K.G.B. bodyguard, and Dmitri V. Kovtun, a onetime Soviet Army officer. Both men have denied accusations by the British police that they killed Mr. Litvinenko, and both have remained outside Britain.
Mr. Kovtun, a former Red Army officer, had applied to be a “core participant” in the inquiry. He made the application weeks after the inquiry started, in what British lawyers saw as a ploy to derail its schedule. A high-profile public inquiry into the death began on Jan. 27, after years of resistance by the British and Russian authorities. It was scheduled to conclude this week, but Mr. Kovtun complicated matters several weeks ago when he declared that he wanted to testify and to become what is known as a core participant in the case. That status would grant him privileges including the opportunity to have his lawyers cross-examine witnesses.
The judge, Robert Owen, suggested on Monday that Mr. Kovtun should be given until May 22 to produce written evidence and set July 27 as the date on which he should give evidence by video link. Judge Owen had said that the public part of his inquiry should end before Easter. The maneuver was widely seen by British lawyers as a ploy to derail the inquiry’s schedule. It introduced the first direct challenge to an account of the case that until then had been dominated by the British police and scientists, and that seemed to lead directly to the Kremlin.
Mr. Litvinenko, 43, a whistle-blower and vitriolic opponent of President Vladimir V. Putin, died in November 2006 after ingesting polonium-laced tea during an encounter with Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun at the upscale Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square, just across from the American Embassy in central London. On his deathbed in 2006, Mr. Litvinenko accused Mr. Putin of responsibility for his poisoning, a charge that the Russian leader has dismissed. Mr. Litvinenko’s death came six years after he fled Russia, and a few weeks after he and his family were granted British citizenship.
His death came six years after he fled Russia and just weeks after he and his family were granted British citizenship. Early in the inquiry, Mr. Lugovoi, a former K.G.B. bodyguard and prosperous entrepreneur who has since become a lawmaker in Russia, dismissed the accusation of murder. Mr. Kovtun’s request threw the final days of the inquiry into disarray.
This month, Mr. Kovtun, a former Red Army officer, said he wanted to reverse his resistance to testifying at the inquiry. “I am ready to answer everything,” Mr. Kovtun told the BBC. “I had nothing to do with the murder.” At a hearing on Monday, Robert Owen, the senior judge in charge of the inquiry, set conditions for Mr. Kovtun to become a core participant including requirements that he produce written evidence and a witness statement by May 22 and that he answer a series of questions posed to him earlier.
Mr. Kovtun and Mr. Lugovoi would both face arrest if they traveled to Britain, which would force Mr. Kovtun to testify by video link. Russia has said that its Constitution forbids the extradition of its own citizens. The judge set July 27 as the date for Mr. Kovtun to begin testifying by video link. “I am ready to answer everything,” Mr. Kovtun told the BBC last week. “I had nothing to do with the murder.”
Judge Owen has said that important evidence relating to the involvement of the British intelligence and security agencies will be kept secret before he produces a final report, which is expected this year. Russian investigators withdrew from the inquiry ostensibly to protest the secrecy of some of the proceedings. Speaking to reporters in Moscow, Mr. Kovtun gave the impression that he expected core participant status to offer him access to classified documents. But Judge Owen said that neither he nor the existing core participants, including the British police and Mr. Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, would be shown secret material. Nor would witnesses who have already testified be recalled, the judge said.
Moscow’s withdrawal has left the inquiry without an official Russian voice to offer the Kremlin’s version of events or to articulate its denials of responsibility. He added that Mr. Kovtun would be required to say by May 22 whether he planned to invoke a legal right to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination.
In testimony so far, British scientists have said the radiation that killed Mr. Litvinenko could only have come from Russia, which produces the bulk of the world’s commercial polonium, a rare isotope once used as a trigger in nuclear weapons. “He will be expected to cooperate fully with the inquiry,” Judge Owen said, adding that the July 27 date for testimony was “fixed, and it will not be moved.”
“The murder was an act of unspeakable barbarism that inflicted on Alexander Litvinenko the most painful and lingering death imaginable,” Ben Emmerson, a lawyer acting for Marina Litvinenko, the victim’s widow, said when the inquiry opened. “It was also an act of nuclear terrorism on the streets of a major city, which put the lives of numerous other members of the public at risk.” Mr. Kovtun’s demand to participate caught British lawyers between a profound skepticism about his motives and an equally powerful reluctance to be perceived as blocking testimony. Robin Tam, a counsel for the inquiry, said on Monday that Mr. Kovtun’s “intervention” should not be permitted to delay Judge Owen’s final report, expected this year.
Mr. Litvinenko “had to be eliminated — not because he was an enemy of the Russian state itself or an enemy of the Russian people, but because he had become an enemy of the close-knit group of criminals who surround Vladimir Putin and keep his corrupt regime in power,” Mr. Emmerson said, referring to the Russian president and citing investigations by Mr. Litvinenko into organized crime gangs in Russia and Spain. Apart from public hearings, the judge also plans closed-door sessions with security officials and others whose contents will not be divulged, in compliance with a series of gag orders intended to safeguard what Judge Owen on Monday called “the national security or international relations.”
Before the inquiry started, the home secretary, Theresa May, insisted that it not cover the question of whether the British authorities ought to have protected Mr. Litvinenko. A lawyer for Ms. Litvinenko has said that her husband acted as a paid agent of MI6, Britain’s overseas intelligence agency, after he fled Moscow.
Throughout the inquiry, which has featured 29 days of hearings so far, the Kremlin has remained aloof, declining to hand over either of the suspects.
British scientists have said the isotope that killed Mr. Litvinenko could only have come from Russia, which produces most of the world’s commercial supply of polonium, a rare metal once used in triggers of nuclear weapons.
“The murder was an act of unspeakable barbarism that inflicted on Alexander Litvinenko the most painful and lingering death imaginable,” Ben Emmerson, a lawyer for Ms. Litvinenko, said when the inquiry opened. “It was also an act of nuclear terrorism on the streets of a major city, which put the lives of numerous other members of the public at risk.”
He said Mr. Litvinenko was killed “not because he was an enemy of the Russian state itself or an enemy of the Russian people, but because he had become an enemy of the close-knit group of criminals who surround Vladimir Putin and keep his corrupt regime in power.”