Kremlin Stymies Britain’s Probe of Former Spy’s Death
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Scotland Yard detectives who traveled to Russia seeking information on the apparent murder of Alexander Litvinenko received a double rebuff yesterday.
The nine officers learned that they would not be able to question witnesses, only listen to Russian prosecutors conducting interviews.
And they were told that suspects could not be extradited to Britain to stand trial over the death of the KGB-trained former agent.
The Kremlin has been smarting from suggestions that President Putin was in some way behind the death of Litvinenko, who died in a London hospital from suspected radiation poisoning on November 23. It was not long before the counterterrorism detectives understood that they were working under straitened conditions.
The Russian prosecutor, Yuri Chaika, said bluntly at an ill-tempered press conference: “Scotland Yard can’t arrest Russian citizens. If they have to be investigated, we can do that in Russia according to a convention. We can open an inquiry … and put them on trial in Russia.”
He added that the detectives would be only spectators at any interviews of people that they had asked to see. “They will not be questioning any suspects,” Mr. Chaika said. “We will carry out the questioning on their behalf.”
Mr. Chaika said detectives could request permission to sit in on the interviews but added, “That doesn’t mean permission will be granted.”
“If they want to arrest citizens of the Russian Federation, it would be impossible because of the Russian constitution,” he said.
Despite the obvious messages from the authorities, a British embassy spokesman said the police officers had received “good cooperation.”
The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that, despite signing a memorandum of understanding on mutual assistance with its Russian counterpart two weeks ago, there was no machinery for extraditing Russian citizens to Britain.
At the top of Scotland Yard’s list of interviews will be Andrei Lugovoi, like Litvinenko a former agent of the FSB, the domestic inheritor of the KGB’s mantle, who met him on November 1, the day the 44-year-old dissident fell ill.
Mr. Lugovoi, now a prosperous businessman, made it clear he wanted to speak to the visiting officers but had been in hospital for tests.
This followed a string of radiation tests conducted on places he had visited on three separate visits to London in the month before Litvinenko’s death, which indicated that Mr. Lugovoi had suffered close contact with polonium, the substance believed to be behind the former agent’s death.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia said the British reaction to Litvinenko’s poisoning was damaging relations between the two countries.
The Kremlin was reportedly incensed that Downing Street allowed the publication of Litvinenko’s deathbed statement accusing Mr. Putin of ordering his killing.
Russia’s prison service ruled out the possibility of police interviewing a former FSB agent who was jailed for four years for allegedly divulging state secrets, Mikhail Trepashkin. Mr. Trepashkin said he had information relevant to Litvinenko’s poisoning.