Spy’s Family Starts Campaign
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LONDON (AP) – The wife and friends of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko began a campaign Tuesday to pressure investigators to find those responsible for his poisoning death more than four months ago.
Marina Litvinenko was joined by Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky and her husband’s close friend, Alex Goldfarb, to announce the creation of the Litvinenko Justice Foundation.
“We will campaign to make sure that governments take all possible steps to ensure that this crime is never repeated,” she said in a statement.
Alexander Litvinenko, 43, died at a London hospital Nov. 23. from a lethal dose of radioactive polonium-210. In a deathbed statement, he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being behind his death, allegations the Russian government has denied.
Police in London and Moscow have launched parallel investigations, but no one has been arrested. Scotland Yard has sent a file of evidence in the case to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service, which will decide if any charges will be brought.
Litvinenko, who claimed publicly in 1998 that his bosses in the Federal Security Service had ordered him to kill Berezovsky, fled to England in 2000. Mr. Berezovsky was an influential Kremlin insider, but fell out with Putin and also left for England. The two men became allies in their campaigns against the Kremlin leadership.
Mr. Berezovsky said the foundation would push for progress in the investigations and help compensate anyone who suffered psychological, physical or material harm in the case. Police investigating the case found several sites around London contaminated by polonium-210. Several people tested positive for contamination.
“Until the method of this absolutely new type of killing using a nuclear micro-bomb is uncovered, not a single person in the U.K. or elsewhere in the world can feel safe against a similar murder,” Mr. Berezovsky said.
London police traveled to Moscow last December to conduct inquiries, and last week officials from Moscow spoke to witnesses in London.
Mr. Berezovsky said he and another of Alexander Litvinenko’s friends, exiled Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev, met the investigators in the hope of speeding up the British inquiry.
